
Glass jeR^tAsa 

Book uAl 



CENTENARY EDITION 



• THE WORKS OF 
THOMAS CARLYLE 

IN THIRTY VOLUMES 



VOL. I 
SARTOR RESARTUS 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



SARTOR RESARTUS 

THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF 
HERR TEUFELSDROCKH 

IN THREE BOOKS 



3Ketn aSermdd()tntf , lute '^tttlxO) i»eU «nt> txtit ! 
JDie Sett ift mein aBermS^tnif, metn Mn ifi fcte 3eit, 

®oet§e. 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 
1899 






Originally published 1831 



V 



:\. 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION . . 

BOOK I 

CHAP. 

I. Preliminary . ~ . 

II. Editorial Difficulties 

III. Reminiscences . . . . 

IV. Characteristics 
V. The World in Clothes . 

VI. Aprons .... 
VII. Miscellaneous-historical . 
VIII. The World out of Clothes 
IX. Adamitism 
X. Pure Reason 
XI. Prospective 

BOOK II 

I. Genesis 
II. Idyllic 

III. Pedagogy . 

IV. Getting under Way 
V. Romance . 

VI. Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh 
VII. The Everlasting No 
VIII, Centre of Indifference 
.- IX. The Everlasting Yea 
X. Pause 



FAQE 

vii 



1 

6 
10 
21 

27 
33 
35 
39 
45 
50 
55 



64 

71 

80 

95 

106 

119 

128 

135 

146 

157 



VI 



SARTOR RESARTUS 



BOOK III 




OHAP. 


FAOK 


I. Incident in Modern History . 


. 165 


II. Church-Clothes 


. 170 


III. Symbols . 


. 173 


IV. Helotage ....... 


. 180 


V. The Phcenix ...... 


. 184 


VI. Old Clothes .,.>., 


. 190 


VII. Organic Filaments . . . . . 


. 194 


VIII. Natural Supernaturalism 


. 202 


IX. Circumspective 


. 213 


X. The Dandiacal Body . . . . 


. 217 


XI. Tailors ....... 


.. 229 


XII. Farewell . 


. 233 


Appendix : Testimonies of Authors . 


. 241 


Index 


. 247 



INTRODUCTION 

Time, the final judge of appeal from the verdicts of successive 
ages, is rather fond of 'reserving' his decisions. Often they 
are held over for a generation or more, under the formula of 
suspension known in the somewhat 'late' Latinity of the lawyers, 
as Cu7ia advisari vult. But sitting as Lord Justice on that supreme 
appellate tribunal which examines the claims of departed writers. 
Time has been * swift of despatch ' in the case of Thomas Carlyle. 
His award has been delivered within fifteen years of Carlyle's 
death, and it confirms the judgment of his contemporaries as to 
his literary greatness. The appeal of his posthumous detractors 
is dismissed with costs. 

We cannot exactly condole with the defeated appellants : they 
hardly deserve that. But we can make some allowance for them, 
for, in truth, we can now more clearly see what grounds they had 
for taking the case to a higher court. Nay, we can even admit 
that their excuse has been in part provided for them by the 
victorious respondent himself. No great man of letters has ever 
so persistently be-littled the mere art of literature as Carlyle. It 
is true that he had his literary heroes to point his discourses on 
hero-worship — his Johnson, his Rousseau, his Burns : surely as 
strange a leash as were ever strung together, — and of course not 
even he could fail to disengage the matchless art of Shakespeare 
from his philosophy, his morality, his profound thoughts on life, 
and what not else among those high matters in which alone 
Carlyle was interested. But as a rule, it is the direct dogmatic 
teaching of a work of literature (which is its accident) and not the 
manner of it, the aesthetic charm, the emotional appeal, the intel- 



viii INTRODUCTION 

lectual delight, the spiritual refreshment of it (which are of its 
essence) that he values: so that when, as in Scott's romances, 
he came across work which consists wholly of the essentials of 
literature, detached from its accidents, the contact with it pro- 
duced a memorable and lamentable effect on his critical faculty. 
Allowing, in short, for a few inconsistencies, Carlyle's attitude 
towards literature pure and simple, — literature as literature— is 
uniform. On scores of pages, in hundreds of passages, he 
enounces or reveals the opinion that, dissociated from direct 
didactic purpose, it is but as sounding brass, and as a tinkling 
cymbal. The pi-eacher with him is immeasurably ahead of the 
mere man of letters, as perhaps the man of action is of both. 

There is thus a certain poetical justice about the resistance 
offered in certain quarters to his decree of canonisation. By 
insisting, in fact, on the superior dignity of the prophet-preacher, 
and by idealising the silent man of action — exalting him who does 
nobly, to a level so vastly higher than his who merely writes 
nobly of noble deeds — Carlyle was in fact 'briefing' a 'devil's 
advocate' against himself For he has now become a prophet 
whose prophecies are of little account; while in the domain of 
action and conduct, his figure as viewed in the light thrown on it 
by his famous biographer, shows distinctly less heroic than it was 
supposed to have been. The disclosure of his personal weaknesses 
— his egoism, his ill-tempers, his peasant-bred envy, his undue 
self-pity— passed harmlessly, as all such disclosures should, and 
will pass, by those whose admiration had always centred on the 
writer and not on the man ; but it fell at first with a most agitat- 
ing shock upon those to whom the man, the leader, the master 
and doctor, the teacher, — by example, as was assumed, as well as 
by precept, — counted for so much more than the writer. The echo 
of their outcries of disenchantment had to die away before a hear- 
ing could be obtained for the truth that Carlyle is neither political 
prophet nor ethical doctor, but simply a great master of literature 
who lives for posterity by the art which he despised. 



INTRODUCTION ix 

Neither prophet nor doctor: no, nor yet philosopher either. 
The word ' philosophy ' and its derivatives are among the hardest- 
worked vocables in the language. The substantive has been 
applied to everything, from a theory of the universe to the 
minutest researches in a single branch of physical science; its 
adjectival form is used indiscriminately to describe a variety of 
the human temperament, and the contents of an optician's shop. 
Men, who never so much as heard of the Stoics, have been called 
' philosophers ' for meeting adversity with fortitude ; quadrants 
and sextants have been dignified with the name of ' philosophical ' 
instruments. And there was hardly less laxity in the employment 
of the word * philosophy ' as applied to the teachings of Carlyle, 
a writer who was alike ignorant of philosophical systems, and 
contemptuous of philosophical method, dismissing the former as 
'word-spinning,' and the latter as ' logic chopping,' and whose own 
metaphysic was a mere tissue of poetic rhapsodies, as his ethic was 
a mere series of intuitional and unreasoned dogmas. One hardly 
knows whether Carlyle himself was aware of the popular designa- 
tion of him in later years as the ' philosopher of Chelsea,' or, if he 
was, what he thought of the cognomen. But there can, at least, be 
no doubt that the appellation was one which he ought in common 
consistency to have emphatically, if not indignantly, repudiated. 

It is interesting, indeed, to inquire what system of philosophy 
the disciples of the master could have managed to extract from his 
writings. A philosopher, whether so self-styled or not, may be 
expected either to suggest some speculative solution of the 
problems of man's origin, man's destiny, man's duty, and above 
all, man's relation to the external world, or, if he is a pure sceptic, 
definitely to pronounce these problems unsoluble. But, while 
Carlyle would presumably have rejected pure dogmatic scepticism, 
such as Hume's, with impatience, there is, nevertheless, not one 
of the questions connected with these high matters, to which he 
has any definite answer to propound. To some of them he offers 
no reply at all ; to others he replies according to the personal 

h 



X INTRODUCTION 

mood, -or the controversial exigencies, of the moment, and 
therefore in half-a-dozen different ways. He seems on the 
metaphysical side to have been more or less unconsciously a 
Fichtean Idealist : at any rate no transcendental German of them 
all, has insisted more strongly on the supremacy and even the 
solitude of the individual consciousness, and on the shadowy 
nature of the external world of sense Yet the ethical affinities 
of this theory of perception, and its easy avenues of exit into 
indifferentism, fatalism, hedonism, and many other 'isms,* which 
he would have heartily objurgated, never seems to have occurred 
to him. There is no sign of his having appreciated the difficulty, 
yet the necessity, of fitting his metaphysical idealism into the 
framework of his essentially and austerely realistic ethics. 

As to those ethics themselves, and the moral cosmology, so to 
call it, with which they were associated, what do they amount to ? 
That there is a Divine Creator and Governor of the universe, 
and a prescribed law of human conduct which man will violate at 
his peril ; that the distinctions between right and wrong are fixed 
from eternity, and the recognition of them implanted ineradicably 
in the heart of man ; that truth is supreme and will ultimately 
and irresistibly prevail over falsehood; and that suffering is attached 
to ill-doing by a law of inevitable sequence — these, and a few 
other correlated dicta of equal simplicity, sum up the whole of 
Carlyle's theology, just as they composed the entire theological 
equipment of the Greek tragedians. As to his ethics : that the 
world is not a hunting-ground of pleasure but an arena of duty ; 
that man must learn to dispense with the happiness of gratified 
longings, and to seek and ensue only the blessings of right action ; 
and that whether there be or be not a future state of rewards and 
punishments, the obligation to such action is no less imperative — 
in these maxims, and their like, are contained the whole ethical 
law and prophets for Carlyle as for the Stoics before him. 
There is nothing in the one set of doctrines which is not to be 
found in Sophocles, nor anything in the other which we could not 



INTRODUCTION xi 

have learned from Marcus Aurelius ; and since the dramas of the 
Athenian poet, and the meditations of the Roman emperor are still 
extant, there would be no need for them to rise from the dead, 
and seek a joint re-incarnation in the person of Carlyle. 

How came it then, it will be asked, that this philosopher 
without a philosophy exerted so powerful an influence over 
English thought throughout the second thirty years of the present 
century ? and how comes it that now, though that influence has 
long since spent itself, he still wields, and promises to wield for an 
indefinite time to come, a power of another kind ? Answers to 
both these questions are not far to seek. The former of the two 
phenomena is to be explained by the fact that though Carlyle 
was no teacher in the proper philosophic sense of the word, he 
was during the day of his influence such a preacher as the world 
has rarely seen. It is common and perhaps natural enough to 
confuse the two functions of * teaching ' and ' preaching,' but their 
distinction is, nevertheless, fundamental. To teach is, in strict- 
ness, to impart knowledge to a learner which he did not possess 
before; while the distinctive purpose of preaching is to give 
vitality and motive power to knowledge which he already 
possesses. The fact that in some cases the imparted knowledge 
is itself new, and the teacher to that extent a preacher also, is an 
immaterial accident not affecting the essence of his function. 
Otherwise a Christian missionary to the heathen would stand on the 
same level as the Founder of his faith. In nineteen cases, more- 
over, out of twenty the preacher is not addressing the heathen. 
He does not deal in new, but in forgotten, truths. His object is 
not to enlarge deficient knowledge, but to awaken slumbering atten- 
tion ; and his success in the attempt will of course be measured 
partly by his own power of applying the required intellectual or 
moral stimulus, and partly by the readiness of his hearers to receive it. 
Seldom has the concurrence of these two conditions been more 
complete than it was during the period covered by Carlyle's 
earlier writings. Then, if ever in human history, the hour and 



xH INTRODUCTION 

the man had met. The Genius of the eighteenth century — that 
age of victorious but unsatisfying common sense — lay at its last 
gasp. It had indeed received its mortal wound in that revolt 
of the human spirit against its contented optimism, from which 
the French Revolution sprang : and its death, though it might be 
postponed, was impossible to avert. Eighty-Nine — if Eighty-Nine 
had borne no Jacobin children — would have killed it outright ; and 
Coleridge and Wordsworth would have sung a new Song of 
Deborah over its destruction. But Eighty-Nine unfortunately was 
too soon succeeded by Ninety-Three ; and the moribund Genius 
received a new lease of life amid loud rejoicings, in which Coleridge 
and Wordsworth joined. But by 1830 this lease had run out, and 
the long delayed reaction came. The new generation were tired 
to death of the eighteenth century tradition, and profoundly 
disgusted with the intellectual and spiritual patrimony which they 
had inherited from it. They were sick of its sandy Utilitarianism, 
its cast-iron economics, its uninspired and uninspiring theology, 
the flat and deadly prose of its theory of life. They were ripe, 
especially the younger among them, for rebellion against a system 
which however eminently conformable to the practical reason, had 
no word of response to utter, no shred of satisfaction to offer to 
those two most importunate claimants in human and especially 
in youthful human nature — the energies and the emotions. The 
new generation were crying out for at least a religion of action if 
they could hold no longer by any religion of speculative belief. 
They wanted a politico-social creed which would find room for the 
new ideas and aspirations rejected or coldly viewed by the 
politicians of the old order. Above all they passionately longed, 
as did the newly risen Romanticists in France — for a presentment 
of human life in literature with all the wealth of colour and 
animation of movement which belong to it in every age, and which 
they felt were not wanting to it in their own. They were 
unutterably weary of contemplating the world as a mere store- 
house of facts and figures, or as a mechanical creation of laws. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

forces and formulae ; and they were eager to realise it once more as 
the scene of the endless drama of human action and passion, of 
struggle, and triumph and defeat. 

It was in the hour when this mood was dominant over the 
younger and more active minds throughout educated England 
that the man appeared. He came bringing with him all that they 
asked for, feeling all that they felt, hating everything that they 
hated (and a good deal more on his own account) and filled full of 
the same ardent if somewhat vague aspirations with which they 
too were bursting. His contempt for the accepted philosophy, 
the conventional theology, the current politics of his time was 
even more profound than theirs. The gritty Benthamism of his 
age was more irritating to his palate, the yoke of its cast-iron 
economics more galling to his shoulders. He was even more 
impatient of 'laws, forces and formulae' than they, even more 
impressed than they with the superiority of action to thought and 
its immeasurable superiority to words. Had his powers of 
expression been only a little above the average; had his 
enthusiasm of the preacher glowed to no extraordinary pitch of 
ardour, he could not have failed to obtain a hearing. What 
wonder then, that with the passionate force of conviction which 
animated his utterances, and the marvellous mastery of language 
which went to the shaping of them, he should alike have stormed 
the heart and carried captive the intellect of his age .'' 

This, of course, is not to say that the Preacher of the Thirties 
had anything like the congregation that ' sat under ' him during 
the two succeeding decades — that the Carlyle of Sartor Resartus 
had a tithe of the following that attended on the Carlyle of 
Past and Present, and the Latter Day Pamphlets. No more is meant 
than that his earliest writings caught the ear of that tribus 
prcerogativa of his countrymen whose suffrage in such cases is to be 
taken first, and who think to-day what the great body of their 
fellow-citizens will think to-morrow. Their suffrage however he 
certainly won — if not unanimously, yet at least, from all of them. 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

save those who still clung to the belief that salvation was to be 
found in politics, and who looked, inconsiderately enough, for a 
pioneer of the future in that new Radicalism which was essentially 
the offspring, and in many respects the degraded offspring, of the 
immediate past. But a very few years' experience of a Reformed 
Parliament sufficed to make converts of them also. They found 
that the new Radical was politically and philosophically as unhelp- 
ful as the old Whig whom he had supplanted; that his social 
ideals were no less inadequate and much more vulgar than those 
of his predecessor ; and that his general views of the world and 
life were those of an infinitely more ' dreary dog.' By the end of 
the decade the process of disenchantment was complete. The 
same great turn of the political tide which swept the Liberals out 
of power, and brought in the great Conservative majority of 1841, 
had its intellectual counterpart in the movement which two years 
later brought a whole multitude of new disciples round the author of 
Past and Present. From this year we may perhaps most safely date 
the commencing growth of that strictly didactic influence which 
was to go on steadily increasing for the next quarter of a century. 
As for the rest of Carlyle's countrymen — for that proportion of 
them (and it was no inconsiderable one), who remained uninflu- 
enced by him for a yet longer time, and many of whom died, 
indeed, in their hardness of heart — their case also is intelligible 
enough. They were alienated and repelled by that very element 
in Carlyle's writings, which, now that his preachings are out of 
date, remains their one element of life— their literary quality. 
Nor should this appear a paradox even to those who were not 
bom into the world until Carlyle had attained the position of an 
established and accepted master in letters. They should be able, 
imaginatively at any rate, to realise to themselves the distress- 
ing shock which was given to the elder world of literary purists 
by the first and yet more by the second publication of Carlyle in 
' Carlylese,' and the effects of which survived among them, plainly 
perceptible down to a period well within the memory of men not 



INTRODUCTION xv 

long past middle age. It was naturally The French Revolution 
which dealt the rudest blow at their susceptibilities. Sartor Resartus 
could be neglected as a mere subjective rhapsody; but the grave 
or professedly grave history of one of the gravest of modern 
events was another matter. A work of that description, from the 
pen of a writer already rising into celebrity compelled the atten- 
tion of the whole educated public to its contents, and therewith 
of necessity to its style. And what a style ! exclaimed the elder 
world of literary purists, absolutely aghast. Was it even a ' style ' 
at all .'' Could you any more discuss it as a style, than you could 
debate the merits of 'oratory' which did not condescend to 
begin by being an articulate utterance ? If excellence of style 
(they continued, breathless) consisted partly in the choice of 
words, and partly in their collocation, what was to be said of a 
writer who fetched his words from anywhere, and flung them 
down anyhow upon the page.'' Was it for this hotch-pot of 
vocabular monstrosities, this witches' caldron of disjointed sen- 
tences, outlandish compounds, fantastic nicknames, extravagant 
metaphors and obscure allusions, that the world was asked to 
exchange the gravity, the lucidity, the eloquence of the accepted 
masters of historical narrative — the simple but nervous English of 
Hume, the polished periods and majestic cadences of Gibbon? 
What would be the fate of our prose literature if the so-called 
style were to be tolerated and find imitators .'' And what, O ! 
what would become of the ' dignity of history,' if this was how 
history was to be written in the future ? 

Such were the alarmed inquiries and despairing cries which 
Carlyle's writings drew from the elder generation, and the echo of 
which was still clearly audible until the majority of that generation 
had passed away. Well on into the Sixties it was still to be heard, 
and some of us who were then in our own twenties will remember 
how many grey-beards were then extant, who, while fully abreast 
of the time in most of their ideas, nay, often admirers of the 
genius, and even adherents to the opinions of Carlyle, continued 



xvr INTRODUCTION 

still to deplore the form of their expression, and sometimes to 
declare roundly that all their interested and approving study of 
his works had not even yet reconciled them to his 'jargon.' The 
young men of the period, or those of them who were growing up 
into Carlyle's public, were not of course partakers with their 
seniors in this holy horror, but they could not help being to some 
extent impressed by it. The fascination which he exercised over 
them was extraordinary; one despairs of ever making it intel- 
ligible to the youth of a generation for whom Carlyle's proportions 
though imposing are no longer heroic : but there was always a 
guilty after-feeling about their enthusiasm for him, and they 
indulged it privily, like a secret vice. Their consciousness of 
absolute surrender to this 'corrupter of pure English' cost them 
frequent searchings of heart. Many a time and oft did they ask 
themselves, whether it might not be the novelty and originality of 
Carlyle's matter which made them not merely tolerate, but fancy 
that they delighted in, the 'jargon' in which it was written, and 
whether, therefore, when the attraction of the matter ceased 
for them, the 'jargon' might not become detestable? Time has 
answerered their question for them; and the doubts which 
disturbed the youth of twenty no longer trouble him who has 
' come to fifty year.' The novelty of Carlyle's writings has long 
since disappeared; all of their supposedly didactic, and much 
even of their hortatory, influence is extinct ; but their charm is 
imperishable, and the belief once so confidently declared that no 
prose literature which did not conform to correct and classic models 
could hope to stand the test of time has thus far derived no 
confirmation from the case of Carlyle. 

We can still see and admit that there was an element of reason 
in the fears of our parents, and an element of truth in their 
contention ; but we can now also discern the due limits both of 
the one and of the other. There was ground for the apprehension 
that the literary example of Carlyle would be mischievous, and, in 
so far as he has found imitators, it has so proved. But such imitators 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

have been almost invariably mere mimics of his mannerisms, with 
no thoughts of their own to express, nor probably any natural 
manner of their own to spoil by the affectation ; and the Carlylian 
style is too distinctively shaped and coloured by the Carlylian 
individuality to tempt any writer with an individuality of his own 
to adopt it. English prose, in short, appears on the whole to be 
much what it would have been if Carlyle had never lived ; he has 
made not a hundredth part of the impression on it that it received, 
for instance, from Macaulay. There was justice again in the 
contention that that prose style of ours which has been slowly 
perfecting itself throughout the two centuries that have passed 
since the day of Dryden, is the best possible mould in which the 
historian can cast his narrative, or the philosopher his thoughts. 
Carlyle wherever he has a commonplace tale to tell is himself 
the witness ; he has proved the point over many a long dry tract 
of his Frederick, where the jerky emphasis of his manner of 
narrating what could not be narrated too unemphatically, becomes 
a mere weariness to the flesh. But this contention of his censors 
overlooks the fact that rules without exceptions are as rare in 
literature as in life, and that to a genius of exceptional and 
indeed unique character rules of style must bend. It fails to 
recognise that — in the literary art at any rate — the claim of 
symmetry, of formal beauty, though great, is not paramount, but 
that the adequacy of the medium of expression to the thing to be 
expresssed, must always be the first consideration. For so many- 
sided and many-coloured a genius as Carlyle's with his throng of 
commanding faculties — his fiery eloquence, his rugged pathos, his 
grim and caustic humour, his unrivalled talent for word-portraiture 
and picturesque description — all struggling, sometimes almost 
simultaneously, to express themselves, there was but one possible 
language — the Carlylese. And whatever may happen to the 'claim 
of style,' whatever may become of the ' dignity of history,' we may 
be sure that so long as eloquence, and pathos, and humour, and 
vivid portraiture and picturesque description retain their power to 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

move and delight mankind, Carlyle's place in the admiration of 
posterity will be secure. 

It would be superfluous in this place, I think, to attempt anything 
like a complete biography of Carlyle, in however condensed a form. 
The main incidents of his life, and in particular the history of his 
middle and later years, must be already too familiar to most readers 
not only from Mr. Froude's pages, but from the flood of studies, 
sketches, letters, reminiscences, and the like, which has poured 
forth in such unbroken volume since his death. It will be more 
to the purpose of an introduction to the first volume of this new 
edition of his works, to confine myself mainly to such details of the 
author's life as are to be gathered from those passages of Sartor 
Resartus, which can with reasonable certainty be identified as 
autobiographical. In a sense, no doubt, it might be said that this 
remarkable work — by some admirers regarded as the greatest, and 
by none denied to be the most characteristic, of all his writings 
— is autobiographical from first to last. It is unquestionably a 
minute and faithful history of Carlyle's intellectual and spiritual 
experiences, which, of course, is the main thing. There can be 
no doubt, for instance, that Pedagogy (Book II., chap, iii.) records 
the author's bitter memories of what he deemed his perverse and 
unintelligent schooling, and barren University course. We know 
as a fact, that the three great chapters in this same Book II. ' The 
Everlasting No,' ' Centre of Indifference,' and ' The Everlasting 
Yea,' give the history of the shipwreck of his early faith, his fierce 
struggle in the waters of blank materialism, and his ultimate 
winning to that bleak, but at least habitable, island of the Stoics 
whereon he spent the remainder of his days. We know, or 
believe ourselves to know the exact date and place of these 
memorable wrestlings ; that their crisis occurred in the month of 
June 1821, in Edinburgh (the so-called 'French Capital' of 
Book II., chap, vii.) and that the Rue Saint-Thomas d'Enfer, in 
which the wrestler ' shook base fear away from him for ever,' is 
no other than Leith Walk in that city. 



INTRODUCTION xix 

So too, we can plausibly identify the days of his schoolmaster- 
ship at Kirkcaldy; and the probable or possible original of 
' Blumine,' the heroine of the exquisite chapter entitled * Romance/ 
— that solitary meadow, green and sunlit, that breaks the stern 
mountain scenery of the Third Book — has been it seems dis- 
covered in the person of Miss Gordon, an ex-pupil of Edward 
Irving's. We can trace his earliest introduction to London society, 
and his discontent with it; we can find a distinct enough 
adumbration of his mother in Gretchen Futteral, if little or none 
of his father in Andreas ; and, indeed, it is likely enough, I suppose, 
that an acute and diligent student of Sartor Resartus, with a 
biography at hand for constant reference, might be able to track 
Carlyle under the disguise of Herr Von Teufelsdrockh along the 
highway of life, past all those sixteen year-stones which divide the 
Edinburgh student days of 1818 from the date of the first start- 
ling apparition of Sartor in Eraser's Magazine for November 1833. 

But it must of course be borne in mind that any strict parallel- 
ism between the author and his creation is not to be expected. 
With his head full of German literature and thought — the only 
subject on which for several years past he had been able to obtain 
a hearing in the London periodical press, it was natural enough 
that Carlyle should have made an imaginary German Professor 
the vehicle of his opinions. But to have * stood ' for the portrait 
in every detail would have defeated his own purpose, since it 
would have made it impossible for him without the appearance of 
undue egotism to enlarge as admiringly as, both for didactic and 
artistic reasons, he required to do on the moral attractions and 
intellectual powers of the author of the Clothes Philosophy. 
Nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that, for instance, in the 
following criticism of the Professor's literary style, he was 
humorously 'posing' Thomas Carlyle as the model for his portrait 
of Diogenes von Teufelsdrockh : — 

' In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability, 
marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of 



XX INTRODUCTION 

intercourse with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, we 
find consummate vigour, a true inspiration ; his burning thoughts step 
forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing 
amid flame and splendour from Jove's head ; a rich, idiomatic diction, 
picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns ; all 
the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest 
Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer 
sleeping and soporific passages ; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches 
even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene !' 

' On the whole,' he continues, — and here the keen and caustic 
analysis discloses itself even more obviously as self-criticism, — 
' Professor Teufelsdrockh is not a cultivated writer.' 

'Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on 
their legs ; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed-up 
by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this or the other 
tagrag hanging from them ; a few even sprawl-out helplessly on all 
sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered.' ; -■ 

Fascinating however as the hunt for autobiographical touches 
in Sartor Resartus may be to the reader of to-day, it had of course 
no interest for the reader of sixty years ago. He was thrown 
back on the thought, the poetry, the humour, the general drift 
and purpose of the book, and he had to make what he could of 
it in that way. In many cases probably the unfortunate man 
endeavoured to read it 'for the story,' though if the effect of 
attacking Sir Charles Grandison in that spirit would have been 
as Johnson held, to drive the student to suicide, the study of 
Sartor Resarttis on the same principle would assuredly seem the 
path of madness. It may be that a grim sense of the comedy of 
this mystification led Carlyle to exaggerate his obscurity, per- 
versity, eccentricity, of malice prepense. He had as we know 
an immense admiration for Sterne, and the notion of applying 
the method of ' Tristram Shandy ' on a cosmic scale so to speak, 
may well have jumped with his sardonic humour. And that, no 
doubt, is why to the genuine lovers not merely of the dramatically 
comic in Sterne's masterpiece (which is his sole attraction for 
most readers), but of the subjectively fantastic in Sterne himself 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

(which is not near so extensively appreciated), the very manner 
and arrangement of Sartor Resartus contribute to its charm. 

Its central conception, its grund-idee, as Professor Teufels- 
drockh would have called it, lends itself with admirable aptitude 
to the Sternian style of treatment. For the Clothes Philosophy, 
as formulated by Carlyle, through the mouth of the Professor, 
affords perpetual opportunities of the abruptest transit from the 
infinitely great to the infinitesimally little. The constant sugges- 
tion of gigantic incongruity — its perpetual temptation to the 
author, after lifting his reader into the transcendental empyrean, 
suddenly to ' dump him down ' on the flattest flats of the earthly- 
ignoble world, has often proved irresistible to many a lesser 
humorist than Carlyle. But, with him it is never resisted : nor 
can any judicious critic desire that it should be. For, even if we 
were to deduct from Sartor Resartus the pure poetic, the pure 
picturesque, the eloquence, passion, and profoundity with which 
the book abounds, it would still remain a monument of * world- 
humour,' such as has been rarely raised in such Titanic dimensions 
in the world's history. This would be so, even if the humoristic 
treatment of the idea were less richly imaginative than it is. To 
have carried the 'Clothes Philosophy from earth to heaven — 
from the uniform of the Dandiacal Body ' to the lebendiges Kleid 
der Gottheit ; to have traced the principle of the symbolic from 
its highest to its lowest manifestations, and to have so displayed 
all matter as the mere vesture of spirit that the mind at once 
recognises the essential affinity between the visible Cosmos and 
the beadle's cocked hat — this was an achievement in the tran- 
scendental-humorous, which in itself deserves to be held in ever- 
lasting remembrance, not only in the record of literature, but in 
the history of human thought. 

How could such a thesis have been methodically treated ? If its 
treatment had not partaken of the vast incongruity of the subject 
it would have been artistically amiss. Worthy, but too serious 
souls have striven, and will no doubt for ever strive to find in 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

Sartor Resartus a consistent and continuously developed 'argu- 
ment ' ; but in vain ! You may construct a theory of the matter 
which will carry you along for a time ; but it will ' throw ' you in 
the end. Book II. for instance, contains no doubt the fairly 
straightforward and consecutive 'Story of a Soul,' — Carlyle's or 
another's, in all probability Carlyle's; and encouraged by its 
coherence a sanguine reader attacks the third and last Book, in 
full belief that here at least 'the bearing* of the Professor's 
'remarks' will be found to 'lie in the application of them.' But 
alas ! the Professor is ' neither to hold nor to bind.' After three 
chapters of sufficiently plain sailing on the decay of creeds and 
churches, Teufelsdrockh is off in Chapter IV. in hot pursuit of a 
Socialistic hare. In the fifth he is eloquently describing the rise 
of a new Society, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of the old, and in 
the Sixth he is in Monmouth Street moralising over its cast 
clothes ! Then, in the next chapter but one to that masterpiece 
of solemnly sustained burlesque, we are being borne along through 
the wonderful chapter on ' Natural Supernaturalism ' to its magni- 
ficent close, perhaps the grandest and most awe-inspired exercise 
on the everlasting theme ' O World, O Life, O Time ! * that 
exists in human language. And then — well then, within three 
pages, we are revelling in the broad buffoonery of 'The 
Dandiacal Body,' and the sardonic irony of the plea for Tailors. 
After which — Chapter the Last and Farewell. 

No ! Let the commentator too enamoured of method desist 
from his useless labours and leave Sartor Resartus to stand for what 
it is — a fantastic but splendid rhapsody, laden with thought, 
glowing with imagination and passion, pungent with irony; to 
the prosaic a stumbling-block, and to the humourless foolishness, 
but to all who bring to the reading of it some slight share of its 
own qualities an unfailing source of spiritual refreshment and 
intellectual delight. 

H. D. TRAILL. 



SARTOR RESARTUS 



BOOK FIRST 



CHAPTER I 

PRELIMINARY 

No Philosopliy of Clothes yet, notwithstanding all our Science. Strangely 
forgotten that Man is by nature a naked animal. The English mind 
ail-too practically absorbed for any such inquiry. Not so, deep-thinking 
Germany. Advantage of Speculation having free course. Editor receives 
from Professor Teufelsdrookh his new "Work on Clothes. 

Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the 
Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, 
with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards ; 
how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, 
and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rush- 
lights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing 
in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole 
in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated, — it might strike 
the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or 
nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of 
Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of 
Clothes. 

Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect : Lagrange, 
it is well known, has proved that the Planetary System, on 
this scheme, will endtue forever ; Laplace, still more cunningly, 
even guesses that it could not have been made on any other 



2 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 

scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be 
better kept ; and water- transport of all kinds has grown more 
commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough : 
what with the labours of our Werners and Huttons, what with 
the ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that 
now, to many a Royal Society, the Creation of a World is 
little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling; 
concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom 
the question. How the apples were got in, presented difficulties. 
Why mention our disquisitions on the Social Contract, on the 
Standard of Taste, on the Migrations of the Herring ? Then, 
have we not a Doctrine of Rent, a Theory of Value ; Philo- 
sophies of Language, of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, 
of Intoxicating Liquors ? Man's whole life and environment 
have been laid open and elucidated ; scarcely a fragment or 
fibre of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but has been probed, 
dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decomposed : 
our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears there are not a 
few, have their Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards : every cel- 
lular, vascular, muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, 
Majendies, Bichats. 

How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that 
the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should 
have been quite overlooked by Science, — the vestural Tissue, 
namely, of woollen or other cloth ; which Man's Soul wears as 
its outmost wrappage and overall ; wherein his whole other 
Tissues are included and screened, his whole Faculties work, 
his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being ? For if, now 
and then, some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an 
owl's-glance into this obscure region, the most have soared 
over it altogether heedless ; regarding Clothes as a property, 
not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the 
leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. Li all speculations 
they have tacitly figured man as a Clothed Animal \ whereas 
he is by nature a Naked Animal ; and only in certain circum- 
stances, by purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes. 



CHAP. I.] PRELIMINARY 3 

Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after : 
the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and 
see what is passing under our very eyes. 

But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, inde- 
fatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after 
all, a blessing that, in these revolutionary times, there should 
be one country where abstract Thought can still take shelter ; 
that while the din and frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and 
Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, deafen every French 
and every English ear, the German can stand peaceful on 
his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling 
multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, 
with preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his Horet ihr Herren 
und lassefs Euch sagen\ in other words, tell the Universe, 
which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. 
Not unfrequently the Germans have been blamed for an 
unprofitable diligence ; as if they struck into devious courses, 
where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey ; 
as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance and that political 
slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they 
were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and 
crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peat-bogs. 
Of that unwise science, which, as our Humorist expresses it, 

' By geometric scale 
Doth take the size of pots of ale ; * 

stiU more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is 
seen vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing 
defensive be said. In so far as the Germans are chargeable 
with such, let them take the consequence. Nevertheless be 
it remarked, that even a Russian steppe has tumuli and 
gold ornaments ; also many a scene that looks desert and 
rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when 
visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism 
erect not only finger-posts and tm-npikes, but spiked gates 
and impassable barriers, for the mind of man.? It is 



4 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

written, * Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall 
be increased.' Surely the plain rule is. Let each considerate 
person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not 
this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and 
their united tasks the task of mankind. How often have 
we seen some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured 
wanderer light on some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally 
momentous province ; the hidden treasures of which he first 
discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and 
effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed ; 
— ^thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting 
new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immea- 
surable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night ! 
Wise man was he who counselled that Speculation should 
have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two 
points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed. 

Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure 
Science, especially pure moral Science, languishes among us 
English ; and how our mercantile greatness, and invaluable 
Constitution, impressing a political or other immediately 
practical tendency on all English cultiu'e and endeavour, 
cramps the free flight of Thought, — that this, not Philo- 
sophy of Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such 
Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our 
language. What English intellect could have chosen such 
a topic, or by chance stumbled on it.^* But for that same 
unshackled, and even sequestered condition of the German 
Learned, which permits and induces them to fish in all 
manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems probable 
enough, this abstruse Inquiry might, in spite of the results 
it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. 
The Editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself 
a man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps discursive 
enough, is free to confess, that never, till these last months, 
did the above very plain considerations, on our total want of 



CHAP. I.] PRELIMINARY 6 

a Philosophy of Clothes, occur to him ; and then, by juite 
foreign suggestion. By the arrival, namely, of a new Book 
from Professor Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo ; treating 
expressly of this subject, and in a style which, whether under- 
stood or not, could not even by the blindest be overlooked. 
In the present Editor's way of thought, this remarkable 
Treatise, vdth its Doctrines, whether as judicially acceded to, 
or judicially denied, has not remained without effect. 

' Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken (Clothes, their 
Origin and Influence) : von Diog. Teufelsdrockh^ J. U.D. etc. 
Stillschweigen und C(^^'. Weissnichtwo, 1831. 

' Here,' says the Weissnichtwo' sche Anzeiger, ' comes a 
Volume of that extensive, close-printed, close-meditated sort, 
which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only in Germany, 
perhaps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing from the hitherto 
irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen and Company, with 
every external furtherance, it is of such internal quality as to 
set Neglect at defiance.' ***** A work,' concludes the 
well-nigh enthusiastic Reviewer, ' interesting alike to the 
antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a 
masterpiece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged inde- 
pendent Germanism and Philanthropy (derber Kerndeutschheit 
und Menschenliebe) ; which will not, assuredly, pass current 
without opposition in high places ; but must and will exalt 
the almost new name of Teufelsdrockh to the first ranks of 
Philosophy, in our German Temple of Honour.' 

Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in 
this the first blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle 
him, sends hither a Presentation-copy of his Book ; with com- 
pliments and encomiums which modesty forbids the present 
Editor to rehearse ; yet without indicated wish or hope of 
any kind, except what may be implied in the concluding 
phrase : Mochte es (this remarkable Treatise) auch im Brit- 
tischen Boden gedeihen \ 



SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 



CHAPTER II 

EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 

How to make known Teufelsdrockh and his Book to English readers; 
especially siich a book ? Editor receives from the Hofrath Heuschrecke a 
letter promising Biographic Documents. Negotiations with Oliver Yorke. 
Sartor Besa/rtus conceived. Editor's assurances and advice to his British 
reader. 

If for a speculative man, ' whose seedfield,' in the sublime 
words of the Poet, ' is Time,' no conquest is important but that 
of new ideas, then might the arrival of Professor Teufelsdrockh's 
Book be marked with chalk in the Editor's calendar. It is 
indeed an 'extensive Volume,' of boundless, almost formless 
contents, a very Sea of Thought ; neither calm nor clear, if 
you will ; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to 
his utmost depth, and return not only with sea- wreck but with 
true orients. 

Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first deliberate 
inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new Branch 
of Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, 
was disclosed ; farther, what seemed scarcely less interesting, 
a quite new human Individuality, an almost unexampled 
personal character, that, namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh 
the Discloser. Of both which novelties, as far as might be 
possible, we resolved to master the significance. But as man 
is emphatically a proselytising creature, no sooner was such 
mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question arose : 
How might this acquired good be imparted to others, perhaps 
in equal need thereof: how could the philosophy of Clothes, 
and the Author of such Philosophy, be brought home, in any 
measure, to the business and bosoms of our own English 
Nation ? For if new-got gold is said to bum the pockets till 
it be cast forth into circulation, much more may new truth. 

Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought 
naturally was to publish Article after Article on this remark- 



CHAP. II.] EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 7 

able Volume, in such widely-circulating Critical Journals as 
the Editor might stand connected with, or by money or love 
procure access to. But, on the other hand, was it not clear 
that such matter as must here be revealed, and treated of, 
might endanger the circulation of any Journal extant ? If, 
indeed, all party-divisions in the State, could have been 
abolished, Whig, Tory, and Radical, embracing in discrepant 
union ; and all the Journals of the Nation could have been 
jumbled into one Journal, and the Philosophy of Clothes 
poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt had 
seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, 
except Fraser's Magazine ? A vehicle all strewed (figuratively 
speaking) with the maddest Waterloo- Crackers, exploding 
distractively and destructively, wheresoever the mystified 
passenger stands or sits ; nay, in any case, understood to be, 
of late years, a vehicle full to overflowing, and inexorably 
shut ! Besides, to state the Philosophy of Clothes without 
the Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdrockh without something 
of his personality, was it not to insure both of entire misap- 
prehension ? Now for Biography, had it been otherwise 
admissible, there were no adequate documents, no hope of 
obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special 
despair. Thus did the Editor see himself, for the while, shut 
out from all public utterance of these extraordinary Doctrines, 
and constrained to revolve them, not without disquietude, in 
the dark depths of his own mind. 

So had it lasted for some months ; and now the Volume on 
Clothes, read and again read, was in several points becoming 
lucid and lucent ; the personality of its Author more and 
more surprising, but, in spite of all that memory and conjec- 
ture could do, more and more enigmatic; whereby the old 
disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent, — when 
altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath 
Heuschrecke, our Professor's chief friend and associate in 
Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously corresponded. 
The Hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began 



8 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 

dilating largely on the 'agitation and attention' which the 
Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its own German 
Republic of Letters ; on the deep significance and tendency 
of his Friend's Volume ; and then, at length, with great cir- 
cumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying ' some 
knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and through 
England to the distant West ' : a work on Professor Teu- 
felsdrockh 'were imdoubtedly welcome to the Family , the 
National, or any other of those patriotic Libraries, at present 
the glory of British Literature ' ; might work revolutions in 
Thought ; and so forth ; — in conclusion, intimating not 
obscm-ely, that should the present Editor feel disposed to 
imdertake a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, Hofrath Heusch- 
recke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite Documents. 
As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evapor- 
ating, but would not crystallise, instantly when the wire or 
other fixed substance is introduced, crystallisation commences, 
and rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with 
the Editor's mind and this offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose 
out of void solution and discontinuity ; like united itself with 
like in definite arrangment : and soon either in actual vision 
and possession, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the 
whole Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid 
mass. Cautiously yet courageously, through the twopenny 
post, application to the famed redoubtable Oliver Yorke was 
now made : an interview, interviews with that singular man 
have taken place ; with more of assurance on our side, with 
less of satire (at least of open satire) on his, than we antici- 
pated ; — for the rest, with such issue as is now visible. As 
to those same ' patriotic Libraries^ the Hofrath's counsel 
could only be viewed with silent amazement ; but with his 
offer of Documents we joyfully and almost instantaneously 
closed. Thus, too, in the sure expectation of these, we 
already see our task begun ; and this our Sartor Resartics, 
which is properly a ' Life and Opinions of Herr Teufels- 
drockh,' hourly advancing. 



CHAP. II.] EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 9 

Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such 
title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. 
Let the British reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, 
what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical 
acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed of. Let 
him strive to keep a free, open sense ; cleared from the mists 
of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant ; and 
directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the 
Book. Who or what such Editor may be, must remain 
conjectural, and even insignificant :^ it is a voice publishing 
tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes ; undoubtedly a Spirit 
addressing Spirits : whoso hath ears, let him hear. 

On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give 
warning : namely, that he is animated with a true though 
perhaps a feeble attachment to the Institutions of our 
Ancestors ; and minded to defend these, according to ability, 
at all hazards ; nay, it was partly with a view to such 
defence that he engaged in this undertaking. To stem, or if 
that be impossible, profitably to divert the current of 
Innovation, such a Volume as Teufelsdrockh's, if cunningly 
planted down, were no despicable pile, or floodgate, in the 
logical wear. 

For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal 
connexion of ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heuschrecke, or this 
Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert our judgment, or sway us 
to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we venture to pro- 
mise, are those private Compliments themselves. Grateful 
they may well be ; as generous illusions of friendship ; as fair 
mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the 
gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of Philo- 
sophic Eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, the 
present Editor revelled in that feast of reason, never since 
vouchsafed him in so full measure ! But what then ? Amicus 
Plato, magis arnica Veritas ; Teufelsdrockh is our friend. Truth 

^ With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler ; 
and, we have reason to think, under a feigned name ! — O.Y . 



10 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 

is our divinity. In our historical and critical capacity, we 
hope we are strangers to all the world ; have feud or favour 
with no one, — save indeed the Devil, with whom, as with the 
Prince of Lies and Darkness, we do at all times wage inter- 
necine war. This assurance, at an epoch when puffery and 
quackery have reached a height unexampled in the annals of 
mankind, and even English Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, 
must write on their door-lintels No cheating' here, — ^we 
thought it good to premise. 



CHAPTER III 

REMINISCENCES 

Teufelsdrockh at Weissnichtwo. Professor of Things in General at the 
University there : Outward aspect and character ; memorable coffee-house 
utterances ; domicile and watch-tower : Sights thence of City -Life by day 
and by night; with reflections thereon. Old 'Liza and her ways. 
Character of Hofrath Heuschrecke, and his relation to Teufelsdrockh. 

To the Author's private circle the appearance of this sin- 
gular Work on Clothes must have occasioned little less sur- 
prise than it has to the rest of the world. For ourselves, 
at least, few things have been more unexpected. Professor 
Teufelsdrockh, at the period of otu* acquaintance with him, 
seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life : a man 
devoted to the higher Philosophies, indeed ; yet more likely, 
if he published at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel and 
Bardili, both of whom, strangely enough, he included under a 
common ban ; than to descend, as he has here done, into the 
angry noisy Forum, with an Argument that cannot but 
exasperate and divide. Not, that we can remember, was the 
Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between us. If 
through the high, silent, meditative Transcendentalism of our 
Friend we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was at 
most Political, and towards a certain prospective, and for the 
present quite speculative, Radicalism ; as indeed some corres- 



CHAP. III.] REMINISCENCES 11 

pondence, on his part, with Herr Oken of Jena was now and 
then suspected ; though his special contributions to the Isis 
could never be more than surmised at. But, at all events, 
nothing Moral, still less an3i;hing Didactico-Religious, was 
looked for from him. 

Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our 
hearing ; which indeed, with the Night they were uttered in, 
are to be forever remembered. Lifting his huge tumbler of 
Gukguk^ and for a moment lowering his tobacco-pipe, he 
stood up in full coffeehouse (it was Zur Grunen Gam, the 
largest in Weissnichtwo, where all the Virtuosity, and nearly 
all the Intellect of the place assembled of an evening) ; and 
there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and the look truly of an 
angel, though whether of a white or of a black one might be 
dubious, proposed this toast : Die Sache der Armen m Gottes 
und Teitfels Namen (The Cause of the Poor, in Heaven's name 

and 's) ! One full shout, breaking the leaden silence ; then 

a gurgle of innumerable emptying bumpers, again followed 
by universal cheering, returned him loud acclaim. It was 
the finale of the night : resuming their pipes ; in the 
highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke ; trium- 
phant, cloud-capt without and within, the assembly broke 
up, each to his thoughtful pillow. Bleibt docli ein echter 
Spass- und Galgen-vogel, said several ; meaning thereby that, 
one day, he would probably be hanged for his democratic 
sentiments. Wo stecM dock der Schalk ? added they, looking 
round : but Teufelsdrockh had retired by private alleys, and 
the Compiler of these pages beheld him no more. 

In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this Philo- 
sopher, such estimate to form of his proposes and powers. And 
yet, thou brave Teufelsdrockh, who could tell what lurked in 
thee ? Under those thick locks of thine, so long and lank, 
overlapping roof- wise the gravest face we ever in this world 
saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. In thy eyes too, deep 
under their shaggy brows, and looking out so still and dreamy, 
* Gukguk is unhappily only an academical — beer. 



12 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic 
fire, and half-fancied that their stillness was but the rest of 
infinite motion, the sleep of a spinning-top? Thy little 
figure, there as, in loose ill-brushed threadbare habiliments, 
thou sattest, amid litter and lumber, whole days, to 'think 
and smoke tobacco,' held in it a mighty heart. The secrets 
of man's Life were laid open to thee ; thou sawest into the 
mystery of the Universe, farther than another ; thou hadst in 
petto thy remarkable Volume on Clothes. Nay, was there 
not in that clear logically-founded Transcendentalism of thine; 
still more, in thy meek, silent, deep-seated Sansculottism, 
combined with a true princely Courtesy of inward nature, 
the visible rudiments of such speculation ? But great men 
are too often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. Already, 
when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable 
Volume lay on the loom ; and silently, mysterious shuttles 
were putting-in the woof ! 

How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish biographical 
data, in this case, may be a curious question ; the answer of 
which, however, is happily not our concern, but his. To us 
it appeared, after repeated trial, that in Weissnichtwo, from 
l^he ^archives or memories of the best-informed classes, no 
Biography of Teufelsdrockh was to be gathered ; not so much 
as\a false one. He was a stranger there, wafted thither by 
what is called the course of circumstances ; concerning whose 
parentage, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had 
indeed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most 
indistinct replies. For himself, he was a man so still and 
altogether unparticipating, that to question him even afar off" 
on such particulars was a thing of more than usual delicacy : 
besides, in kis sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not 
without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert such intrusions, 
and deter you from the like. Wits spoke of him secretly as 
if he were a kind of Melchizedek, without father or mother of 
any kind ; sometimes, with reference to his great historic and 



CHAP. lii.J REMINISCENCES 13 

statistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of expressing 
himself like an eye-witness of distant transactions and scenes, 
they called him the Ewige Jude, Everlasting, or as we say, 
Wandering Jew. 

To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a Man 
as a Thing ; which Thing doubtless they were accustomed to 
see, and with satisfaction ; but no more thought of account- 
ing for than for the fabrication of their daily Allgemeine 
Zeitung, or the domestic habits of the Sun. Both were there 
and welcome; the world enjoyed what good was in them, 
and thought no more of the matter. The man Teufels- 
drockh passed and repassed, in his little circle, as one of 
those originals and nondescripts, more frequent in German 
Universities than elsewhere ; of whom, though you see them 
alive, and feel certain enough that they must have a History, 
no History seems to be discoverable; or only such as men 
give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins : That they 
have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of 
gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and resist 
pressure ; that is, are visible and tangible objects in this 
phantasm world, where so much other mystery is. 

It was to be remarked that though, by title and diploma. 
Professor der AUerley-Wissenschqfi, or as we should say in 
English, ' Professor of Things in General,' he had never deliv- 
ered any Course ; perhaps never been incited thereto by any 
public furtherance or requisition. To all appearance, the 
enlightened Government of Weissnichtwo, in founding their 
New University, imagined they had done enough, if * in times 
like ours,' as the half-official Program expressed it, * when all 
things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into Chaos, 
a Professorship of this kind had been established ; whereby, 
as occasion called, the task of bodying somewhat forth again 
from such Chaos -^ight be, even slightly, facilitated.' That 
actual Lectures should be held, and Public Classes for the 
* Science of Things in General,' they doubtless considered 
premature ; on which ground too they had only established 



14 SARTOR RESARTUS [book i. 

the Professorship, nowise endowed it ; so that Teufelsdrockh, 
' recommended by the highest Names,' had been promoted 
thereby to a Name merely. 

Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admira- 
tion of this new Professorship : how an enlightened Govern- 
ment had seen into the Want of the Age (Zeiibedurfniss) ; 
how at length, instead of Denial and Destruction, we were 
to have a science of Affirmation and Reconstruction ; and 
Germany and Weissnichtwo were where they should be, in the 
vanguard of the world. Considerable also was the wonder at 
the new Professor, dropt opportunely enough into the nascent 
University ; so able to lecture, should occasion call ; so ready 
to hold his peace for indefinite periods, should an enlightened 
Government consider that occasion did not call. But such 
admiration and such wonder, being followed by no act to 
keep them living, could last only nine days ; and, long before 
our visit to that scene, had quite died away. The more 
cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at popu- 
larity, on the part of a Minister, whom domestic embarrass- 
ments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards 
finally drove from the helm. 

As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appearances at 
the Griine Gans, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of 
him. Here, over his tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading 
Journals ; sometimes contemplatively looking into the clouds 
of his tobacco-pipe, without other visible employment : always, 
from his mild ways, an agreeable phenomenon there ; more 
especially when he opened his lips for speech ; on which occa- 
sions the whole Coflfee-house would hush itself into silence, as 
if sure to hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear 
a whole series and river of the most memorable utterances ; 
such as, when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, 
with fit audience : and the more memorable, as issuing from 
a head apparently not more interested in them, not more 
conscious of them, than is the sculptured stone head of some 
public fountain, which through its brass mouth-tube emits 



CHAP. III.] REMINISCENCES 15 

water to the worthy and the unworthy ; careless whether it 
be for cooking victuals or quenching conflagrations ; indeed, 
maintains the same earnest assiduous look, whether any water 
be flowing or not. 

To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic 
Englishman, however unworthy, Teufelsdrockh opened himself 
perhaps more than to the most. Pity only that we could not 
then half guess his importance, and scrutinise him with due 
power of vision ! We enjoyed, what not three men in Weiss- 
nichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to the Pro- 
fessor's private domicile. It was the attic floor of the highest 
house in the Wahngasse ; and might truly be called the 
pinnacle of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the 
contiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground. 
Moreover, with its windows it looked towards all the four 
Orte, or as the Scotch say, and we ought to say, Airts : the 
sitting-room itself commanded three ; another came to view 
in the Schlqfgemach (bed-room) at the opposite end ; to say 
nothing of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, duplicates, 
and showing nothing new. So that it was in fact the specu- 
lum or watch-tower of Teufelsdrockh ; wherefrom, sitting at 
ease, he might see the whole life-circulation of that con- 
siderable City ; the streets and lanes of which, with all their 
doing and driving {Thun und Treiben), were for the most part 
visible there. 

* I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive,' have we 
heard him say, *and witness their wax-laying and honey- 
making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From 
the Palace esplanade, where music plays while Serene Highness 
is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in 
her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, 
sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all ; for, except the 
Schlosskirche weathercock, no biped stands so high. Couriers 
arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow 
bagged-up in pouches of leather ; there, topladen, and with 
four swift horses, rolls-in the country Baron and his house- 



16 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 

hold ; here, on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully 
along, begging alms : a thousand carriages, and wains, and 
cars, come tumbling-in with Food, with young Rusticity, and 
other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling 
out again with Produce manufactured. That living flood, 
pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest 
thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? Aits der 
Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin : From Eternity, onwards to 
Eternity ! These are Apparitions : what else ? Are they 
not Souls rendered visible : in Bodies, that took shape and 
will lose it, melting into air? Their solid Pavement is a 
Picture of the Sense ; they walk on the bosom of Nothing, 
blank Time is behind them and before them. Or fanciest 
thou, the red and yellow Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on 
its heels and feather in its crown, is but of Today, without a 
Yesterday or a Tomorrow ; and had not rather its Ancestor 
alive when Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island ? Friend, 
thou seest here a living link in that Tissue of History, which 
inweaves all Being : watch well, or it will be past thee, and 
seen no more. 

* Ach, mein Lieber!'' said he once, at midnight, when we 
had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, ' it 
is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, 
struggling up through smoke and thousandfold exhalation, 
some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks 
Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting-dogs over the Zenith 
in their leash of sidereal fire ? That stifled hum of Midnight, 
when Traffic has lain down to rest ; and the chariot- wheels of 
Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are 
bearing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch 
for her ; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like 
nightbirds, are abroad : that hum, I say, like the stertorous, 
unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven ! Oh, under 
that hideous coverlet of vapours, and putrefactions, and un- 
imaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and 
hid ! The joyful and the sorrowful are there ; men are dying 



CHAP. III.] REMINISCENCES 17 

there, men are being bom ; men are praying, — on the other 
side of a brick partition, men are cursing ; and around them 
all is the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers 
in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask cmtains ; 
Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger- 
stricken into its lair of straw : in obscure cellars, Rouge-et- 
Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry 
Villains ; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing 
their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The 
Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready ; and she, 
full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the 
borders : the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his picklocks 
and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in 
their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms, and dancing- 
rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts ; 
but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous 
and faint, and bloodshot eyes look-out through the darkness, 
which is around and within, for the light of a stem last 
morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow : comes 
no hammering from the Rdbenstein ? — ^their gallows must even 
now be o' building. Upwards of five-hundred-thousand two- 
legged animals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal 
positions ; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the fool- 
ishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers 
in his rank dens of shame ; and the Mother, with streaming 
hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips 
only her tears now moisten. — All these heaped and huddled 
together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry be- 
tween them ; — crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel ; — 
or weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed 
vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others : such 
work goes on under that smoke-counterpane ! — ^But I, mein 
Werther, sit above it all ; I am alone with the Stars.' 

We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of 
such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced 
there ; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a 



18 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 

single tallow-light, and far enough from the window, nothing 
save that old calmness and fixedness was visible. 

These were the Professor's talking seasons : most commonly 
he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent and 
smoked ; while the visitor had liberty either to say what he 
listed, receiving for answer an occasional grunt ; or to look 
round for a space, and then take himself away. It was a 
strange apartment ; full of books and tattered papers, and 
miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, 'united in 
a common element of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below 
tables ; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn hand- 
kerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside ; ink-bottles alter- 
nated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes. Periodical 
Literatiu-e, and Blucher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 
'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer 
and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, 
and for the rest a very orderly creature, had no sovereign 
authority in this last citadel of Teufelsdrockh ; only some 
once in the month she half-forcibly made her way thither, 
with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdrockh hastily saving his 
manuscripts) efiected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such 
lumber as was not Literary. These were her Erdbehen (earth- 
quakes), which Teufelsdrockh dreaded worse than the pesti- 
lence ; nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to 
comply. Glad would he have been to sit here philosophising 
forever, or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of 
doors : but Lieschen was his right-arm, and spoon, and neces- 
sary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed. We can still 
remember the ancient woman ; so silent that some thought 
her dumb ; deaf also you would often have supposed her ; for 
Teufelsdrockh, and Teufelsdrockh only, would she serve or 
give heed to ; and with him she seemed to communicate 
chiefly by signs ; if it were not rather by some secret divina- 
tion that she guessed all his wants, and supplied them. 
Assiduous old dame ! she scoured, and sorted, aiid swept, in 
her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear ; yet 



CHAP. III.] REMINISCENCES 19 

all was tight and right there : hot and black came the coffee 
ever at the due moment ; and the speechless Lieschen herself 
looked out on you, from under her clean white coif with its 
lappets, through her clean withered face and wrinkles, with a 
look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence. 

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither : the 
only one we ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the 
Hofrath Heuschrecke, already known, by name and expecta- 
tion, to the readers of these pages. To us, at that period, 
Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane- 
necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps sufficiently 
distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in 
wet, 'they never appear without their umbrella.' Had we 
not known with what ' little wisdom' the world is governed ; 
and how, in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine Public 
Men can for most part be but mute train-bearers to the 
hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing or unwill- 
ing dupes, — ^it might have seemed wonderful how Herr 
Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor, and 
Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any 
man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give ; 
in whose loose, zigzag figiu-e ; in whose thin visage, as it went 
jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation, — ^you 
traced rather confusion worse confounded ; at most. Timidity 
and physical Cold ? Some indeed said withal, he was ' the 
very Spirit of Love embodied ' : blue earnest eyes, full of sad- 
ness and kindness ; purse ever open, and so forth ; the whole 
of which, we shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite 
groundless. Nevertheless friend Teufelsdrockh's outline, who 
indeed handled the burin like few in these cases, was probably 
the best : Er hat Gemuth umd Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, 
doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals-Gunst ; ist gegenwdrtig dber 
halb-zerruttet, halh-erstarrt, ' He has heart and talent, at least 
has had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or favour of 
Fortune ; and so is now half-cracked, half-congealed.' — What 
the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may 



20 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

wonder : we, safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, are 
careless. 

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufels- 
drockh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature 
of Heuschrecke himself. We are enabled to assert that he 
hung on the Professor with the fondness of a Boswell for his 
Johnson. And perhaps with the like return ; for Teufels- 
drockh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, 
as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at 
best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other 
hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, 
and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the 
elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically in- 
fluential of the two, looked and tended on his little Sage, whom 
he seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufels- 
drockh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself 
into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so 
that nothing might be lost : and then, at every pause in the 
harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh 
(for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in 
motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, 
Bravo ! Das glauh' ich ; in either case, by way of heartiest 
approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of 
which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and godlike indif- 
ference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke 
pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could 
knead and publish, was other than medicinal and sacred. 

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufels- 
drockh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does 
he still, live and meditate. Here, perched-up in his high 
Wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in solitude, outwatching 
the Bear, it was that the indomitable Inquirer fought all his 
battles with Dulness and Darkness ; here, in all probability, 
that he wrote this surprising Volume on Clothes. Additional 
particulars : of his age, which was of that standing middle 
sort you could only guess at ; of his wide surtout ; the colour 



CHAP. IV.] CHARACTERISTICS 21 

of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and 
so forth, we might report, but do not. The Wisest truly is, 
in these times, the Greatest ; so that an enlightened curiosity, 
leaving Kings and suchlike to rest very much on their own 
basis, tm"ns more and more to the Philosophic Class : never- 
theless, what reader expects that, with all our writing and 
reporting, Teufelsdrockh could be brought home to him, till 
once the Documents arrive ? His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily 
Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint 
conjecture. But, on the other hand, does not his Soul lie en- 
closed in this remarkable Volume, much more truly than 
Pedro Garcia's did in the buried Bag of Doubloons ? To the 
soul of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, namely, on 
the ' Origin and Influence of Clothes,' we for the present 
gladly return. 



CHAPTER IV 

CHARACTERISTICS 

Teufelsdrockh and his "Work on Clothes : Strange freedom of speech ; tran- 
scendentalism ; force of insight and expression ; multifarious learning : 
Style poetic, uncouth : Comprehensiveness of his humour and moral feel- 
ing. How the Editor once saw him laugh. Different kinds of Laughter 
and their significance. 

It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work 
on Clothes entirely contents us ; that it is not, like all works 
of genius, like the very Sun, which, though the highest pub- 
lished creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots 
and troubled nebulosities amid its elBFiilgence, — a mixture of 
insight, inspiration, with dulness, double- vision, and even utter 
blindness. 

Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises 
and prophesy ings of the WeissnicTitwd'sche Anzeiger, we ad- 
mitted that the Book had in a high degree excited us to 
self-activity, which is the best effect of any book ; that it had 
even operated changes in our way of thought ; nay, that it 



22 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I 

promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine- 
shaft, wherein the whole world of Speculation might hence- 
forth dig to unknown depths. More especially it may now be 
declared that Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience 
of research, philosophic and even poetic vigour, are here made 
indisputably manifest ; and unhappily no less his prolixity 
and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude ; that, on the whole, 
as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is 
much rubbish in his Book, though likewise specimens of 
almost invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England 
we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of such a 
topic as Clothes, too often the manner of treating it betokens in 
the Author a rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, 
indeed inevitable in a German, but fatal to his success with 
oiu' public. 

Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, 
or has mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks- out with a 
strange plainness ; calls many things by their mere dictionary 
names. To him the Upholsterer is no Pontiff, neither is any 
Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt and overhung : 
* a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and 
or-molu,' as he himself expresses it, * cannot hide from me that 
such Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite Space, where 
so many God-created Souls do for the time meet together."* 
To Teufelsdrockh the highest Duchess is respectable, is 
venerable; but nowise for her pearl bracelets and Malines 
laces : in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little less and little 
more than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a 
Clown's smock ; ' each is an implement,' he says, * in its kind ; 
a tag for hooiking-together ; and, for the rest, was dug from 
the earth, and hammered on a stithy before smith's fingers.' 
Thus does the Professor look in men's faces with a strange 
impartiality, a strange scientific freedom ; like a man unversed 
in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the 
Moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running 
through his whole system of thought, that all these short- 



CHAP. IV.] CHARACTERISTICS 23 

comings, over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise : 
if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, 
in his Transcendental Philosophies, and humour of looking at 
all Matter and Material things as Spirit ; whereby truly his 
case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. 

To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it 
is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we can 
safely recommend the Work : nay, who knows but among 
the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as Teufelsdrockh 
maintains, that ' within the most starched cravat there passes 
a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered 
waistcoat beats a heart,' — the force of that rapt earnestness 
may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce 
through ? In our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist 
living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, 
a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which except in the 
higher walks of Literatm'e, must be rare. Many a deep glance, 
and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into 
mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man, 
Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he 
severs asunder the confusion ; shears down, were it furlongs 
deep, into the true centre of the matter ; and there not only 
hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it 
home, and bmes it. — On the other hand, let us be free to 
admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. Often after 
some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go 
dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the 
merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, 
which indeed he is. 

Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and 
literature in most known tongues, from Sanchoniathon to Dr 
Lingard, from your Oriental Shasters, and TahnudSf and 
Kora/ns, with Cassini's Siamese Tables, and Laplace's Mecanique 
Celeste, down to Robinson Crusoe and the Belfast Town and 
Country Almanaclc, are familiar to him, — we shall say nothing; 
for unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans such 



24 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK 1. 

universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing 
commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there 
of course. A man that devotes his life to learning, shall he 
not be learned ? 

In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial 
capability, marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, 
and apparent want of intercourse with the higher classes. 
Occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigour, a 
true inspiration ; his burning thoughts step forth in fit 
burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing 
amid flame and splendour from Jove's head ; a rich, idiomatic 
diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint 
tricksy turns ; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, 
wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful 
vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific 
passages ; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure 
doting jargon, so often intervene ! On the whole, Professor 
Teufelsdrockh is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences 
perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their 
legs ; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed- 
up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this 
or the other tagrag hanging from them ; a few even sprawl- 
out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismem- 
bered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there 
lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the 
whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator ; 
now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else 
the shrill mockery of Fiends ; now sinking in cadences, not 
without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt 
enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a 
monotonous hum ; of which hum the true character is 
extremely • difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never 
fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real 
Humour, which we reckon among the very highest qualities of 
genius, or some echo of mere Insanity and Inanity, which 
doubtless ranks below the very lowest. 



CHAP. IV.] CHARACTERISTICS 25 

Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal inter- 
course, do we still lie with regard to the Professor''s moral 
feeling. Gleams of an ethereal love burst forth from him, soft 
wailings of infinite pity ; he could clasp the whole Universe 
into his bosom, and keep it warm ; it seems as if under that 
rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is so 
sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine ; shows such indiiFer- 
ence, malign coolness towards all that men strive after ; and 
ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic 
humour, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness, — ^that 
you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate 
Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial 
Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where 
kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and 
street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only 
children could take interest. His look, as we mentioned, is 
probably the gravest ever seen : yet it is not of that cast-iron 
gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors ; 
but rather the gravity as of some silent, high-encircled 
mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct volcano ; into 
whose black deeps you fear to gaze : those eyes, those lights 
that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly 
Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether 
Fire! 

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigma- 
tic nature, this of Teufelsdrockh ! Here, however, we gladly 
recall to mind that once we saw him laugh ; once only, 
perhaps it was the first and last time in his life ; but then 
such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven 
Sleepers ! It was of Jean Paul's doing : some single billow 
in that vast World-Mahlstrom of Humour, with its heaven- 
kissing coruscations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the 
frost of death ! The large-bodied Poet and the small, both 
large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together, the 
present Editor being privileged to listen ; and now Paul, in 
his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable * Extra- 



26 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

harangues ' ; and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for a Cast- 
metal King : gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes 
and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light ; through those 
murky features, a radiant, ever-yoimg Apollo looked ; and he 
burst forth like the neighing of all TattersalPs, — tears 
streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into 
the air, — ^loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable ; a laugh not 
of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from 
head to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed, yet 
with measure, began to fear all was not right : however, 
Teufelsdrockh composed himself, and sank into his old still- 
ness ; on his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, 
a slight look of shame ; and Richter himself could not rouse 
him again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology 
know how much is to be inferred from this ; and that no 
man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be alto- 
gether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter : the 
cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man ! Some 
men wear an everlasting barren simper ; in the smile of others 
lies a cold glitter as of ice : the fewest are able to laugh, 
what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and 
snigger from the throat outwards ; or at best, produce some 
whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through 
wool : of none such comes good. The man who cannot 
laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; but 
his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem. 

Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdrockh has one 
scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst : an almost 
total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is 
true, his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, 
through the Narrative portions, a certain show of outward 
method ; but of true logical method and sequence there is too 
little. Apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, 
the Work naturally falls into two Parts ; a Historical- 
Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative : but falls, un- 
happily, by no firm line of demarcation ; in that labyrinthic 



CHAP, v.] THE WORLD OF CLOTHES 2T 

combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed 
runs quite through the other. Many sections are of a debat- 
able rubric, or even quite nondescript and unnameable ; 
whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, but too often 
distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had 
been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster- 
sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were hurled 
into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public 
invited to help itself. To bring what order we can out of 
this Chaos shall be part of our endeavour. 



CHAPTER V 

THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 

Futile cause-and-effect Philosophies. Teufelsdrockh's Orbia Vestitus. 
Clothes first invented for the sake of ornament. Picture of our progenitor, 
the Aboriginal Savage. Wonders of growth and progress in mankind's 
history. Man defined as a Tool-using Animal. 

* As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws,'' observes our Pro- 
fessor, * so could I write a Spirit of Clothes ; thus, with an 
Esprit des Lois, properly an Esprit de Coutvmes, we should 
have an Esprit de Costumes. For neither in tailoring nor in 
legislating does man proceed by mere Accident, but the hand 
is ever guided on by mysterious operations of the mind. In 
all his Modes, and habilatory endeavom-s, an Architectural 
Idea will be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are the 
site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, 
of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out 
in folded mantles, based on light sandals ; tower-up in high 
headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles ; swell- 
out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuber- 
osities ; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the 
world an Agglomeration of four limbs, — will depend on the 
nature of such Architectural Idea : whether Grecian, Gothic, 
Later-Gothic, or altogether Modem, and Parisian or Anglo- 



28 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Colour ! From the 
soberest drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyn- 
crasies unfold themselves in choice of Colour : if the Cut 
betoken Intellect and Talent, so does the Colom* betoken 
Temper and Heart. In all which, among nations as among 
individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable, though in- 
finitely complex working of Cause and Effect : every snip 
of the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by ever-active 
Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences of a superior order 
are neither invisible nor illegible. 

'For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philo- 
sophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable 
winter-evening entertainment : nevertheless, for inferior Intel- 
ligences, like men, such Philosophies have always seemed to 
me uninstructive enough. Nay, what is your Montesquieu 
himself but a clever infant spelling Letters from a hierogly- 
phical prophetic Book, the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, 
in Heaven ? — Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, 
not why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and such 
a Law ; but even why / am here, to wear and obey anything ! 
— Much, therefore, if not the whole, of that same Spirit oj 
Clothes I shall suppress, as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even 
impertinent : naked Facts, and Deductions drawn therefrom 
in quite another than that omniscient style, are my humbler 
and proper province."" 

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdrockh has 
nevertheless contrived to take-in a well-nigh boundless extent 
of field ; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond 
our horizon. Selection being indispensable, we shall here 
glance-over his First Part only in the most cursory manner. 

This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous 
learning, a'nd utmost patience and fairness : at the same time, 
in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to inte- 
rest the Compilers of some Library of General, Entertaining, 
Useful, or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous 
readers of these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which 



CHAP, v.] THE WORLD OF CLOTHES 29 

Heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended us to that 
joint-stock vehicle of publication, 'at present the glory of 
British Literatm-e ' ? If so, the Library Editors are welcome 
to dig in it for their own behoof. 

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and 
Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of 
a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite 
antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an 
unconcerned approval. Still less have we to do with 'Lilis, 
Adam's first wife, whom, according to the Talmudists, he had 
before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock, the whole pro- 
geny of aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,' — ^very needlessly, 
we think. On this portion of the Work, with its profound 
glances into the Adam-Kadmon, or Primeval Element, here 
strangely brought into relation with the Ni/l and Muspel 
(Darkness and Light) of the antique North, it may be enough 
to say, that its correctness of deduction, and depth of 
Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled perhaps not the 
worst Hebraist in Britain with something like astonishment. 

But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdrockh hastens 
from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind 
over the whole habitable and habilable globe. Walking by 
the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, 
Otaheitean, Ancient and Modem researches of every con- 
ceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as 
the Niimbergers give an Orbis Pictus) an Orhis Vestitus ; or 
view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all 
times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, 
we can triumphantly say : Fall to ! Here is learning : an 
irregular Treasury, if you will ; but inexhaustible as the Hoard 
of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the 
rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheep- 
skin cloaks and wampum belts ; phylacteries, stoles, albs ; 
chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, 
leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the 
name Gallia Braccata indicates, are the more ancient). Hussar 



30 SARTOR RESARTUS [book L 

cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly 
before us, — even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not forgotten. 
For most part, too, we must admit that the Learning, hetero- 
geneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true 
concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted 
out and thrown aside. 

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching 
pictures of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised 
us. The first purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, 
was not warmth or decency, but ornament. * Miserable 
indeed,' says he, ' was the condition of the Aboriginal Savage, 
glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which with the 
beard reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a 
matted cloak ; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural 
fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on 
wild-fruits ; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in 
morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey ; without 
implements, without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to 
which, that his sole possession and defence might not be lost, 
he had attached a long cord of plaited thongs ; thereby re- 
covering as well as hm^ling it with deadly unerring skill. 
Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge once satisfied, 
his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (Putz). 
Warmth he found in the toils of the chase ; or amid dried 
leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto : 
but for Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild 
people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. 
The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as 
indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilised 
countries. 

' Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer ; loftiest 
Serene Highness ; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rose- 
bloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom 
thou lovest, worshippest as a divine Presence, which, indeed, 
symbolically taken, she is, — ^has descended, like thyself, from 
that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal Anthropo- 



CHAP, v.] THE WORLD OF CLOTHES 31 

phagus ! Out of the eater cometh forth meat ; out of the 
strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, 
not by Time, yet in Time ! For not Mankind only, but all 
that Mankind does or beholds, is in continual growth, re- 
genesis and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy 
Word, into the ever-living, ever- working Universe : it is a 
seed-grain that cannot die ; unnoticed today (says one), it will 
be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a 
Hemlock-forest !) after a thousand years. 

' He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by device of 
Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering 
most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic 
world : he had invented the Art of Printing. The first 
ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and Charcoal drove Monk 
Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling : what will the last do ? 
Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under 
Thought, of Animal courage imder Spiritual. A simple 
invention it was in the old-world Grazier, — sick of lugging 
his slow Ox about the country till he got it bartered for com 
or oil, — to take a piece of Leather, and thereon scratch or 
stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or Pecus) ; put it in his 
pocket, and call it Pecunia, Money. Yet hereby did Barter 
grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and 
all miracles have been out-miracled : for there are Rothschilds 
and English National Debts ; and whoso has sixpence is 
sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men ; commands 
cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount 
guard over him, — to the length of sixpence. — Clothes too, 
which began in foolishest love of Ornament, what have they 
not become ! Increased Security and pleasurable Heat soon 
followed : but what of these ? Shame, divine Shame, {Schaam, 
Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthropophagous bosom, 
arose there mysteriously under Clothes ; a mystic grove- 
encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us 
individuality, distinctions, social polity ; Clothes have made 
Men of us ; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us. 



82 SARTOR RESARTUS [book i. 

' But, on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, ' Man 
is a Tool-using Animal (Handthierendes Thier). Weak in 
himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for 
the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough ; 
has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. 
Feeblest of bipeds ! Three quintals are a crushing load for 
him ; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste 
rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools : with 
these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him ; 
he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are 
his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. 
Nowhere do you find him without Tools : without Tools he 
is nothing, with Tools he is all.' 

Here may we not, for a moment, inteftnipt the stream of 
Oratory with a remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using 
Animal appears to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably 
the precisest and best .? Man is called a Laughing Animal : 
but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it ; and is 
the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher ? Teufels- 
drockh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we 
make of that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal ; 
which, indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as 
useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies 
his steak by riding on it? Again, what Cookery does the 
Greenlander use, beyond stowing-up his whale-blubber, as a 
marmot, in the like case, might do ? Or how would 
Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco Indians who, 
according to Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches 
of trees ; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, 
the whole country being under water ? But, on the other hand, 
show us the human being, of any period or climate, without 
his Tools : those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint- 
ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or can have. 

* Man is a Tool-using Animal,' concludes Teufelsdrockh in 
his abrupt way ; * of which truth Clothes are but one example : 
and surely if we consider the interval between the first wooden 



CHAP. VI.] APRONS 33 

Dibble fashioned by man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, 
or the British House of Commons, we shall note what 
progress he has made. He digs up certain black stones from 
the bosom of the earth, and says to them. Transport me and 
this luggage at the rate qfjive-and-thirty miles an hour ; and 
they do it : he collects, apparently by lot, six-hundred and 
fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them. Make 
this nation toil far us. Meed for us, hunger and sorrow and sin 
for us ; and they do it.' 



CHAPTER VI 

APRONS 

Divers Aprons in the world with divers uses. The Military and Police 
Establishment Society's working Apron. The Episcopal Apron with its 
corner tucked in. The Laystall. Journalists now our only Kings and 
Clergy. 

One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume 
is that on Aprons. What though stout old Gao, the Persian 
Blacksmith, 'whose Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, 
because raised in revolt which proved successful, is still the 
royal standard of that country ' ; what though John Knox's 
Daughter, 'who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would 
catch her husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should 
lie and be a bishop ' ; what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, 
with many other Apron worthies, — ^figm*e here.? An idle 
wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approach- 
ing to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible. What, 
for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following ? 

'Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to 
safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip 
of notched silk (as it were, the emblem and beatified ghost of 
an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at 
Niimberg Workboxes and Toyboxes, has gracefully fastened 
on ; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, 
wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel ; 



34 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 

or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise 
half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace, — 
is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this 
Vestment? How much has been concealed, how much has 
been defended in Aprons ! Nay, rightly considered, what is 
your whole Military and Police Establishment, charged at 
imcalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-coloured, iron- 
fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily enough); 
guarding itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this 
Devil's-smithy {Teufelsschmiede) of a world? But of all 
Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the 
Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the usefulness of 
this Apron? The Overseer (Episcopus) of Souls, I notice, 
has tucked in the comer of it, as if his day's work were done : 
what does he shadow forth thereby ? ' &c. &c. 

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read 
such stuff as we shall now quote ? 

'I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the 
Parisian Cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for 
Typography ; therefore as an encoiu-agement to modem 
Literature, and deserving of approval ; nor is it without 
satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm having 
in view to introduce the same fashion, with important exten- 
sions, in England.' — ^We who are on the spot hear of no such 
thing ; and indeed have reason to be thankful that hitherto 
there are other vents for our Literature, exuberant as it is. — 
Teufelsdrockh continues : ' If such supply of printed Paper 
should rise so far as to choke-up the highways and public 
thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse 
to. In a world existing by Industry, we grudge to employ 
fire as a destroying element, and not as a creating one. 
However, Heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. 
In the mean while, is it not beautiful to see five-million 
quintals of Rags picked annually from the Laystall ; and 
annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, printed-on, and 
sold, — returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths by 



CHAP. VII.] MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 35 

the way ? Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags or 
Clothes-rubbish, the grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of- 
motion, from which and to which the Social Activities (like 
vitreous and resinous Electricities) circulate, in larger or 
smaller circles, through the mighty, billowy, stormtost Chaos of 
Life, which they keep alive ! ' — Such passages fill us, who love 
the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed feeling. 

Farther down we meet with this : ' The Journalists are 
now the true Kings and Clergy : henceforth Historians, unless 
they are fools, must write not of Bourbon Dynasties, and 
Tudors and Hapsbxu-gs ; but of Stamped Broad-sheet 
Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, according as this 
or the other Able Editor, or Combination of Able Editors, 
gains the world's ear. Of the British Newspaper Press, 
perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful enough in 
its secret constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive 
History already exists, in that language, imder the title of 
Satan's Invisible World Displayed ; which, however, by search 
in all the Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet succeeded 
in procxu-ing {vermochte nicht aufzutreihen)!' 

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. 
Thus does Teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where he had 
little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian 
Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the 
Brittische Journalistik ; and so stumble on perhaps the most 
egregious blunder in Modem Literature ! 



CHAPTER VII 

MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 

How Men and Fashions come and go. German Costume in the fifteenth 
century. By what strange chances do we live in History ! The costume of 
Bolivar's Cavalry. 

Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and 
historic, when he reaches the Middle Ages in Em"ope, and 
down to the end of the Seventeenth Century ; the true era of 



36 SARTOR RESARTUS [book i. 

extravagance in Costume. It is here that the Antiquary and 
Student of Modes comes upon his richest harvest. Fantastic 
garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeeded 
each other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The 
whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom 
with that breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. 
Indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and everyway interesting 
have we formd these Chapters, that it may be thrown-out as 
a pertinent question for parties concerned. Whether or not 
a good English translation thereof might henceforth be 
profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work 
On Ancient Armour ? Take, by way of example, the follow- 
ing sketch ; as authority for which Paulinus's Zeiikilrzende 
Lust (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, referred to : 

'Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the 
Fifteenth Century, we might smile ; as perhaps those bygone 
Germans, were they to rise again, and see our haberdashery, 
would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin. But happily 
no bygone German, or man, rises again ; thus the Present is 
not needlessly trammelled with the Past ; and only grows out 
of it, like a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its 
branches, but lie peaceably undergroimd. Nay it is very 
mournful, yet not useless, to see and know, how the Greatest 
and Dearest, in a short while, would find his place quite fiUed- 
up here, and no room for him ; the very Napoleon, the very 
Byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, and were 
now a foreigner to his Europe. This is the law of Progress 
secured ; and in Clothes, as in all other external things 
whatsoever, no fashion will continue. 

' Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts, 
complicated chains and gorgets, huge chum-boots, and other 
riding and, fighting gear have been bepainted in modern 
Romance, till the whole has acquired somewhat of a sign- 
post character, — I shall here say nothing : the civil and 
pacific classes, less touched upon, are wonderful enough for 
us. 



CHAP. VII.] MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 37 

*Ilich men, I find, have TeusinJce'' (a perhaps untrans- 
lateable article) ; ' also a silver girdle, whereat hang little 
bells ; so that when a man walks, it is with continual 
jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of 
bells (Glockenspiel) fastened there ; which, especially in sudden 
whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a grateful 
eifect. Observe too how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic- 
arch intersections. The male world wears peaked caps, an ell 
long, which hang bobbing over the side {scMef) : their shoes 
are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, arid laced 
on the side with tags ; even the wooden shoes have their 
ell-long noses : some also clap bells on the peak. Further, 
according to my authority, the men have breeches without 
seat {ohne Gesdss) : these they fasten peakwise to their shirts ; 
and the long round doublet must overlap them. 

'Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out 
behind and before, so that back and breast are almost bare. 
Wives of quality, on the other hand, have train-gowns four 
or five ells in length ; which trains there are boys to carry. 
Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their silk-cloth Galley, with a 
Cupid for steersman ! Consider their welts, a handbreadth 
thick, which waver round them by way of hem ; the long 
flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to 
shoe, wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The 
maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold 
spangles, and pendent flames {Flammen\ that is, sparkling 
hair-drops : but of their mother's headgear who shall speak ? 
Neither in love of grace is comfort forgotten. In winter 
weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can afford 
it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem, not 
one but two sufficient hand-broad welts ; all ending atop in 
a thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad : these 
are their Ruff-mantles (KragemndnteT). 

* As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not ; 
but the men have doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple 
ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter {mit Teig zusammcn- 



38 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

gekleistert), which create protuberance enough. Thus do the 
two sexes vie with each other in the art of Decoration ; and 
as usual the stronger carries it.' 

Our Professor, whether he have humour himself or not, 
manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance 
of it, which, could emotion of any kind be confidently predi- 
cated of so still a man, we might call a real love. None of 
those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, comuted shoes, or other 
the like phenomena, of which the History of Dress offers so 
many, escape him : more especially the mischances, or striking 
adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with 
due fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he 
spread in the mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to 
provoke little enthusiasm in him ; he merely asks. Whether 
at that period the Maiden Queen 'was red-painted on the 
nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tirewomen, 
when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in 
any glass, were wont to serve her ^ ' We can answer that Sir 
Walter knew well what he was doing, and had the Maiden 
Queen been stufied parchment dyed in verdigris, would have 
done the same. 

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that 
were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swoUen- 
out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of 
Bran, — our Professor fails not to comment on that luckless 
Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some 
projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his devoir 
on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted several 
pecks of dry wheat-dust : and stood there diminished to a 
spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby 
round him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this reflec- 
tion : 

' By what strange chances do we live in History .? Eros- 
tratus by a torch ; Milo by a bullock ; Henry Darnley, an 
unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs ; most Kings and 
Queens by beings born under such and such a bed-tester; 



CHAP. VIII.] THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 39 

Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of 
a turkey ; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his 
breeches, — for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits 
him. Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of 
Forgetting : my Friends, yield cheerfully to Destiny, and 
read since it is written.' — Has Teufelsdrockh to be put in 
mind that, nearly related to the impossible talent of Forget- 
ting, stands that talent of Silence, which even travelling 
Englishmen manifest.'^ 

*The simplest costume,' observes our Professor, 'which I 
anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as regi- 
mental, by Bolivar's Cavalry, in the late Columbian wars. A 
square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is provided (some 
were wont to cut-off the comers, and make it circular) : in 
the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long ; through 
this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck ; 
and so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from 
many strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm) ; and not 
only dressed, but harnessed and draperied.' 

With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its 
singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we 
shall quit this part of our subject. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 

Teufelsdrockh's Theorem, 'Society founded upon Cloth'; his Method, 
Intuition quickened by Experience. — The mysterious question, Who am I ? 
Philosophic systems all at fault : A deeper meditation has always taught, 
here and there an individual, that all visible things are appearances only ; 
but also emblems and revelations of God. Teufelsdrockh first comes upon 
the question of Clothes : Baseness to which Clothing may bring us. 

If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume, 
Teufelsdrockh, discussing merely the Werden (Origin and 
successive Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished many a 
reader, much more will he in the Speculative-Philosophical 



40 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

portion, which treats of their WirJcen, or Influences. It is 
here that the present Editor first feels the pressure of his 
task ; for here properly the higher and new Philosophy of 
Clothes commences : an untried, almost inconceivable region, 
or chaos ; in venturing upon which, how difficiilt, yet how 
unspeakably important is it to know what course, of survey 
and conquest, is the true one ; where the footing is firm 
substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, 
and may engulf us ! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no less than 
to expound the moral, political, even religious Influences of 
Clothes ; he undertakes to make manifest, in its thousandfold 
bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's earthly interests, 
'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by 
Clothes.' He says in so many words, 'Society is founded 
upon Cloth' ; and again, ' Society sails through the Infinitude 
on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of 
clean and unclean beasts in the Apostle's Dream ; and with- 
out such Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless depths, or 
mount to inane limboes, and in either case be no more.' 

By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of 
meditation this grand Theorem is here unfolded, and innumer- 
able practical Corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were per- 
haps a mad ambition to attempt exhibiting. Our Professor's 
method is not, in any case, that of common school Logic, 
where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by the 
skirts of the other ; but at best that of practical Reason, 
proceeding by large Intuition over whole systematic groups 
and kingdoms ; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, 
almost like that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or 
spiritual Picture of Nature : a mighty maze, yet, as faith 
whispers, not without a plan. Nay we complained above, 
that a cert9,in ignoble complexity, what we must call mere 
confusion, was also discernible. Often, also, we have to 
exclaim : Would to Heaven those same Biographical Docu- 
ments were come ! For it seems as if the demonstration lay 
much in the Author's individuality ; as if it were not Argu- 



CHAP. VIII.] THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 41 

ment that had taught him, but Experience. At present it is 
only in local glimpses, and by significant fragments, picked 
often at wide-enough intervals from the original Volume, and 
carefully collated, that we can hope to impart some outline or 
foreshadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are 
once more invited to favour us with their most concentrated 
attention : let these, after intense consideration, and not till 
then, pronounce. Whether on the utmost verge of our actual 
horizon there is not a looming as of Land ; a promise of new 
Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for 
such as have canvas to sail thither? — As exordium to the 
whole, stand here the following long citation : 

' With men of a speculative turn,' writes Teufelsdrockh, 
there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when 
in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable ques- 
tion : Who am / ; the thing that can say " I " (das Wesen 
das sich Ich nennt) ? The world, with its loud trafficking, 
retires into the distance; and, through the paper-hangings, 
and stone-walls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce and 
Polity, and all the living and lifeless integuments (of Society 
and a Body), wherewith your Existence sits surrounded, — ^the 
sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are alone 
with the Universe, and silently commune with it, as one 
mysterious Presence with another. 

* Who am I ; what is this Me ? A Voice, a Motion, an 
Appearance ; — some embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal 
Mind ? Cogito, ergo sum. Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us 
but a little way. Sure enough, I am ; and lately was not : 
but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies around, 
written in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of 
jubilee and wail, in thousand-figm-ed, thousand-voiced, har- 
monious Nature : but where is the cunning eye and ear to 
whom that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate 
meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and 
Dream-grotto ; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest 
century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and 



42 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 

many-coloured visions flit round our sense; but Him, the 
Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we 
see not ; except in rare half- waking moments, suspect not. 
Creation, says one, lies before us, like a glorious Rainbow; 
but the Sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. 
Then, in that strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows as if 
they were substances ; and sleep deepest while fancying our- 
selves most awake ! Which of your Philosophical Systems is 
other than a dream-theorem ; a net quotient, confidently 
given out, where divisor and dividend are both unknown.'' 
What are all your national Wars, with their Moscow 
Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled Revolutions, but the Som- 
nambulism of uneasy Sleepers ? This Dreaming, this Som- 
nambulism is what we on Earth call Life ; wherein the most 
indeed undoubtedly wander, as if they knew right hand from 
left ; yet they only are wise who know that they know 
nothing. 

* Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpres- 
sibly unproductive ! The secret of Man's Being is still like 
the Sphinx's secret : a riddle that he cannot rede ; and for 
ignorance of which he suiFers death, the worst death, a 
spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and 
Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles 
are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in 
good Logic-mortar ; wherein, however, no Knowledge will 
come to lodge. The whole is greater than the part : how 
exceedingly true ! Nature abhors a vacuum • how exceedingly 
false and calumnious ! Again, Nothing can act hut where it 
is : with all my heart ; only, where is it ? Be not the slave 
of Words : is not the Distant, the Dead, while I love it, and 
long for it, and mourn for it. Here, in the genuine sense, as 
truly as th6 floor I stand on ? But that same Where, with 
its brother When, are from the first the master-coloiu's of our 
Dream-grotto ; say rather, the Canvas (the warp and woof 
thereof) whereon all our Dreams and Life-visions are painted. 
Nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation taught certain of 



CHAP.VIIL] THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 43 

every climate and age, that the Where and When, so myste- 
riously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial 
terrestrial adhesions to thought ; that the Seer may discern 
them where they mount up out of the celestial Everywhere 
and forever : have not all nations conceived their God as 
Omnipresent and Eternal ; as existing in a universal Here, 
an everlasting Now? Think well, thou too wilt find that 
Space is but a mode of our human Sense, so likewise Time ; 
there is no Space and no Time : We are — we know not 
what ; — light-sparkles floating in the asther of Diety ! 

' So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were but 
an air-image, oiu* Me the only reality : and Nature, with its 
thousandfold production and destruction, but the reflex of our 
own inward Force, the " phantasy of our Dream " ; or what 
the Earth-Spirit in Faust names it, the living- visible Garment 
of God : 

' " In Being's floods^ in Action's storm, 
I walk and workj above^ beneath. 
Work and weave in endless motion ! 

Birth and Death, 

An infinite ocean ; 

A seizing and giving 

The fire of Living : 
Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply. 
And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by." 

Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this thunder- 
speech of the Erdgeist, are there yet twenty units of us that 
have learned the meaning thereof? 

' It was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with 
these high speculations, that I first came upon the question of 
Clothes. Strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of 
there being Tailors and Tailored. The Horse I ride has his 
own whole fell : strip him of the girths and flaps and extrane- 
ous tags I have fastened round him, and the noble creature is 
his own sempster and weaver and spinner ; nay his own boot- 
maker, jeweller, and man-milliner ■, he bounds free through 



44 SARTOR RESARTUS [book L 

the valleys, with a perennial rainproof court-suit on his body ; 
wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection ; 
nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and 
fringes, with gay variety of colour, featly appended, and ever 
in the right place, are not wanting. While I — ^good Heaven ! 
— ^have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, 
the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen 
or seals, the felt of furred beasts ; and walk abroad a moving 
Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the 
Charnel-house of Natiu-e, where they would have rotted, to rot 
on me more slowly ! Day after day, I must thatch myself 
anew ; day after day, this despicable thatch must lose some 
film of its thickness ; some film of it, frayed away by tear and 
wear, must be brushed-ofF into the Ashpit, into the Laystall ; 
till by degrees the whole has been brushed thither, and I, the 
dust-making, patent Rag-grinder, get new material to grind 
down. O subter-brutish ! vile ! most vile ! For have not I 
too a compact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier ? Am I a 
botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then ; or a 
tightly-articulated, homogeneous little Figiu-e, automatic, nay 
alive ? 

' Strange enough how creatm'es of the human-kind shut 
their eyes to plainest facts ; and by the mere inertia of 
Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders 
and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead 
and dullard ; much readier to feel and digest, than to think 
and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his 
absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him 
by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a 
Creation of the World happen twice, and it ceases to be marvel- 
lous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. Perhaps not once in a 
lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, of any country 
or generation, be he gold-mantled Prince, or russet-jerkined 
Peasant, that his Vestments and his Self are not one and indi- 
visible ; that he is naked, without vestments, till he buy or 
steal such, and by forethought sew and button them. 



CHAP. IX.] ADAMITISM 45 

'For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes- 
thatch, and how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, 
it tailorises and demoralises us, fill me with a certain horror 
at myself and mankind ; almost as one feels at those Dutch 
Cows, which, during the wet season, you see grazing deliber- 
ately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the 
meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great in 
the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious 
wrappages ; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift 
has it, ** a forked straddling animal with bandy legs " ; yet 
also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of Mysteries.' 



CHAPTER IX. 

ADAMITISM. 

The universal utility of Clothes, and their higher mystic virtue, illustrated. 
Conception of Mankind stripped naked ; and immediate consequent dis- 
solution of civilised Society. 

Let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions 
broached in the conclusion of the last Chapter. The Editor 
himself, on first glancing over that singular passage, was 
inclined to exclaim : What, have we got not only a Sanscu- 
lottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract? A new 
Adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is the 
Nineteenth, and destructive both to Superstition and Enthu- 
siasm ? 

Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdrockh, what benefits un- 
speakable all ages and sexes derive from Clothes. For 
example, when thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slobbery fresh- 
man and new-comer in this Planet, sattest muling and puking 
in thy nurse's arms ; sucking thy coral, and looking forth into 
the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been 
without thy blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls ? 
A terror to thyself and mankind ! Or hast thou forgotten 



46 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 

the day when thou first receivedst breeches, and thy long 
clothes became short? The village where thou livedst was 
all apprised of the fact ; and neighbour after neighbour kissed 
thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper 
coins, on that the first gala-day of thy existence. Again, 
wert not thou, at one period of life, a Buck, or Blood, or 
Macaroni, or Incroyable, or Dandy, or by whatever name, 
according to year and place, such phenomenon is distinguished? 
In that one word lie included mysterious volumes. Nay, now 
when the reign of folly is over, or altered, and thy clothes are 
not for triumph but for defence, hast thou always worn them 
perforce, and as a consequence of Man's Fall ; never rejoiced 
in them as in a warm movable House, a Body round thy 
Body, wherein that strange Thee of thine sat snug, defying 
all variations of Climate ? Girt with thick double-milled 
kerseys ; half-buried under shawls and broadbrims, and over- 
alls and mud-boots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and 
mittens, thou hast bestrode that 'Horse I ride'; and, though 
it were in wild winter, dashed through the world, glorying in 
it as if thou wert its lord. In vain did the sleet beat round 
thy temples ; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or 
woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds howl, — forests 
sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep, — ^and the 
storms heap themselves together into one huge Arctic whirl- 
pool : thou flewest through the middle thereof, striking fire 
from the highway ; wild music hummed in thy ears, thou too 
wert as a 'sailor of the air'; the wreck of matter and the 
crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide. 
Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou 
been ; what had thy fleet quadruped been ? — Nature is good, 
but she is not the best : here truly was the victory of Art 
over Nature, A thunderbolt indeed might have pierced thee ; 
all short of this thou couldst defy. 

Or, cries the courteous reader, has yoiu" Teufelsdrockh for- 
gotten what he said lately about 'Aboriginal Savages,' and 
their ' condition miserable indeed '? Would he have all this 



CHAP. IX.] ADAMITISM 47 

unsaid ; and us betake ourselves again to the * matted cloak,' 
and go sheeted in a ' thick natural fell ' ? 

Nowise, courteous reader ! The Professor knows fidl well 
what he is saying ; and both thou and we, in our haste, do 
him wrong. If Clothes, in these times, 'so tailorise and 
demoralise us,' have they no redeeming value ; can they not 
be altered to serve better ; must they of necessity be thrown 
to the dogs ? The truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sanscu- 
lottist, is no Adamite ; and much perhaps as he might wish 
to go forth before this degenerate age 'as a Sign,' would 
nowise wish to do it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of 
Nakedness. The utility of Clothes is altogether apparent to 
him : nay perhaps he has an insight into their more recondite, 
and almost mystic qualities, what we might call the omnipo- 
tent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before vouchsafed 
to any man. For example : 

' You see two individuals,' he writes, ' one dressed in fine 
Red, the other in coarse threadbare Blue : Red says to Blue, 
" Be hanged and anatomised " ; Blue hears with a shudder, 
and (O wonder of wonders !) marches sorrowfully to the 
gallows ; is there noosed-up, vibrates his hom*, and the 
surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton for 
medical purposes. How is this ; or what make ye of your 
Nothing can act hut where it is ? Red has no physical hold 
of Blue, no clutch of him, is nowise in contact with him : 
neither are those ministering Sheriff's and Lord-Lieutenants 
and Hangmen and Tipstaves so related to commanding Red, 
that he can tug them hither and thither ; but each stands 
distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so 
is it done : the articulated Word sets all hands in Action ; 
and Rope and Improved-drop perform their work. 

' Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold : First, 
that Man is a Spirit ^ and bound by invisible bonds to All 
Men; secondly, that he wears Clothes, which are the visible 
emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual 
a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown ; whereby all 



48 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

mortals know that he is a Judge ? — Society, which the more I 
think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth. 

' Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous 
ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, 
Levees, Couchees ; and how the ushers and macers and pur- 
suivants are all in waiting ; how Duke this is presented by 
Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and innumer- 
able Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are 
advancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence ; and I strive, in 
my remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity, 
^-on a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the — shall I 
speak it ? — ^the Clothes fly-off the whole dramatic corps ; and 
Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed Presence itself, 
every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, not a shirt 
on them ; and I know not whether to laugh or weep. This 
physical or psychical infirmity, in which perhaps I am not 
singular, I have, after hesitation, thought right to publish, 
for the solace of those afflicted with the like.' 

Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to 
keep it secret ! Who is there now that can read the five 
columns of Presentations in his Morning Newspaper without a 
shudder ? Hypochondriac men, and all men are to a certain 
extent hypochondriac, should be more gently treated. With 
what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, 
follows out the consequences which Teufelsdrockh, with a 
devilish coolness, goes on to draw : 

* What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in 
reality ; should the buttons all simultaneously start, and the 
solid wool evaporate, in very Deed, as here in Dream ? Ach 
Gott ! How each skulks into the nearest hiding-place ; their 
high State Tragedy {Haupt- wnd Staats-Action) becomes a 
Pickleherring-Farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of 
Farce ; the tables (according to Horace), and with them, the 
whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police, 
and Civilized Society, are dissolved, in wails and howls.' 

Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windle- 



CHAP. IX.] ADAMITISM 49 

straw addressing a naked House of Lords ? Imagination, 
choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and will not 
forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the Ministerial, 
the Opposition Benches — infandum! infandimi! And yet 
why is the thing impossible ? Was not every soul, or rather 
every body, of these Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or 
nearly so, last night ; * a forked Radish with a head fantasti- 
cally carved ' ? And why might he not, did omt stern fate so 
order it, walk out to St. Stephen's, as well as into bed, in 
that no-fashion ; and there, with other similar Radishes, hold 
a Bed of Justice .? * Solace of those afflicted with the like ! ' 
Unhappy Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a ' physical or 
psychical infirmity' before? And now how many, perhaps, 
may thy imparalleled confession (which we, even to the 
sounder British world, and goaded-on by Critical and Bio- 
graphical duty, grudge to reimpart) incurably infect there- 
with ! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists, or only the 
maddest ? 

' It will remain to be examined,' adds the inexorable 
Teufelsdrockh, ' in how far the Scarecrow, as a Clothed 
Person, is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, and English 
trial by jury : nay perhaps, considering his high function (for 
is not he too a Defender of Property, and Sovereign armed 
with the terrors of the Law .?), to a certain royal Immunity 
and Inviolability ; which, however, misers and the meaner 
class of persons are not always voluntarily disposed to grant 
him.' * * ""'■ * « O my friends, we are (in Yorick 
Sterne's words) but as " turkeys driven, with a stick and red 
clout, to the market " : or if some drivers, as they do in 
Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle 
thereof terrifies the boldest ! ' 



50 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 



CHAPTER X 

PURE REASON 

A Naked World possible, nay actually exists, under the clothed one. Man, 
in the eye of Pure Reason, a visible God's Presence. The beginning of all 
wisdom, to look fixedly on Clothes till they become transparent. Wonder, 
the basis of Worship : Perennial in man. Modern Sciolists who cannot 
wonder : Teuf elsdrockh's contempt for, and advice to them. 

It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as above 
hinted, is a speculative Radical, and of the very darkest tinge ; 
acknowledging, for most part, in the solemnities and parapher- 
nalia of civilised Life, which we make so much of, nothing 
but so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and ' bladders with 
dried peas.' To linger among such speculations, longer than 
mere Science requires, a discerning public can have no wish. 
For our purposes the simple fact that such a Naked World is 
possible, nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), will be 
sufficient. Much, therefore, we omit about ' Kings wrestling 
naked on the green with Carmen,' and the Kings being 
thrown : ' dissect them with scalpels,' says Teufelsdrockh ; ' the 
same viscera, tissues, livers, lights, and other life-tackle, are 
there : examine their spiritual mechanism ; the same great 
Need, great Greed, and little Faculty ; nay ten to one but 
the Carman, who understands draught-cattle, the rimming of 
wheels, something of the laws of unstable and stable equili- 
brium, with other branches of wagon-science, and has actually 
put forth his hand and operated on Nature, is the more 
cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, their so un- 
speakable difference.? From Clothes.' Much also we shall 
omit about confusion of Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and 
how it would be everywhere * Hail fellow well met,' and Chaos 
were come again : all which to any one that has once fairly 
pictured-out the grand mother-idea. Society in a state of 
Nakedness, will spontaneously suggest itself. Should some 
sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world 



CHAP. X.] PURE REASON 51 

without Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, 
could exist, let him turn to the original Volume, and view 
there the boundless Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching 
soiu" and pestilential : over which we have lightly flown ; 
where not only whole armies but whole nations might sink ! 
If indeed the following argument, in its brief riveting 
emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final : 

' Are we Opossums ; have we natural Pouches, like the 
Kangaroo ? Or how, without Clothes, could we possess the 
master-organ, soul's seat, and true pineal gland of the Body 
Social : I mean, a Purse ? ' 

Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teufels- 
drockh ; at worst, one knows not whether to hate or to love 
him. For though, in looking at the fair tapestry of human 
Life, with its royal and even sacred figm-es, he dwells not on 
the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse ; and indeed 
turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of 
that unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience 
and indifference, which must have sunk him in the estimation 
of most readers, — ^there is that within which unspeakably 
distinguishes him from all other past and present Sanscu- 
lottists. The grand imparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdrockh 
is, that with all this Descendentalism, he combines a Trans- 
cendentalism, no less superlative ; whereby if on the one hand 
he degrade man below most animals, except those jacketed 
Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the visible 
Heavens, almost to an equality with the Gods. 

* To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, ' what is man .? An 
omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure 
Reason what is he ? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. 
Round his mysterious Me, there lies, under all those wool- 
rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the 
Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, and 
dwells with them in Union and Division ; and sees and 
fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and 
long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that 



52 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

strange Garment ; amid Sounds and Colours and Forms, as it 
were, swathed-in, and inextricably over-shrouded : yet it is 
sky- woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in 
the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities ? He 
feels ; power has been given him to know, to believe ; nay 
does not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval 
brightness, even here, though but for moments, look through ? 
Well said Saint Chrysostom, vdth his lips of gold, " the true 
Shekinah is Man " : where else is the God's-Presence mani- 
fested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our 
fellow-man ? ' 

In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Platonic 
Mysticism of our Author, which is perhaps the fundamental 
element of his nature, bursts forth, as it were, in full flood : 
and, through all the vapour and tarnish of what is often so 
perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment, we seem to 
look into a whole inward Sea of Light and Love ; — though, 
alas, the grim coppery clouds soon roll together again, and 
hide it from view. 

Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable in this 
man ; and indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long 
ago apparent. Nothing that he sees but has more than a 
common meaning, but has two meanings : thus, if in the 
highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne-Mantle, as well as 
in the poorest Ox-goad and Gipsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, 
Decay, Contemptibility ; there is in each sort Poetry also, and 
a reverend Worth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, 
is Spirit, the manifestation of Spirit : were it never so 
honourable, can it be more ? The thing Visible, nay the 
thing Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as Visible, 
what is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial 
Invisible, * unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright'? 
Under which point of view the following passage, so strange 
in purport, so strange in phrase, seems characteristic enough : 

* The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on Clothes, 
or even with armed eyesight, till they become transparent. 



CHAP. X.] PURE REASON 53 

" The Philosopher," says the wisest of this age, " must station 
himself in the middle " : how true ! The Philosopher is he 
to whom the Highest has descended, and the Lowest has 
mounted up ; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. 

' Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether 
woven in Arkwright looms, or by the silent Arachnes that 
weave unrestingly in our imagination ? Or, on the other hand, 
what is there that we cannot love ; since all was created by 
God? 

'Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the 
woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper 
Clothes) into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, in 
this or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less incom- 
petent Digestive-apparatus ; yet also an inscrutable venerable 
Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees with eyes ! ' 

For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals 
much in the feeling of Wonder ; insists on the necessity and 
high worth of universal Wonder ; which he holds to be the 
only reasonable temper for the denizen of so singular a 
Planet as ours. ' Wonder,' says he, * is the basis of Worship : 
the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in Man ; only 
at certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, 
a reign in partibus mjideliwm? That progress of Science, which 
is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensura- 
tion and Numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdrockh, 
much as he otherwise venerates these two latter processes. 

* Shall yoiu" Science,' exclaims he, ' proceed in the small 
chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, imdergroimd workshop of 
Logic alone ; and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, 
whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines 
and Tangents, Codification, and Treatises of what you call 
Political Economy, are the Meal ? And what is that Science, 
which the scientific head alone, were it screwed offj, and (like 
the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it 
alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart, — but one 
other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the 



54 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too noble an organ ? 
I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps 
poisonous ; at best, dies like cookery with the day that called 
it forth ; does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and 
wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase 
to all Time.' 

In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or softer, 
according to ability ; yet ever, as we would fain persuade 
ourselves, with charitalie intent. Above all, that class of 
'Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, and professed 
Enemies to Wonder ; who, in these days, so numerously 
patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics' Institute of 
Science, and cackle like true Old-Roman geese and goslings 
round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none ; nay who 
often, as illuminated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable 
society, in full daylight, with rattle and lantern, and insist 
on guiding you and guarding you therewith, though the Sun 
is shining, and the street populous with mere justice-loving 
men : ' that whole class is inexpressibly wearisome to him. 
Hear with what uncommon animation he perorates : 

*The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually 
wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal 
Societies, and carried the whole Mecanique Celeste and HegeVs 
Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Ob- 
servatories with their results, in his single head, — is but a 
Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those 
who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful. 

* Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism ; wilt walk 
through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, 
or even by the hand-lamp of what I call Attorney-Logic ; and 
" explain" all, " account" for all, or believe nothing of it ? Nay, 
thou wilt attempt laughter ; whoso recognises the unfathom- 
able, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere 
under our feet and among our hands ; to whom the Universe 
is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle- 
stall, — he shall be a delirious Mystic ; to him thou, with 



CHAP. XL] PROSPECTIVE 55 

sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and 
shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it ? — 
Armer Teyfeli Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull 
gender? Thou thyself, wert thou not bom, wilt thou not 
die ? " Explain " me all this, or do one of two things : Retire 
into private places with thy foolish cackle ; or, what were 
better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is 
done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, but that 
thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sandblind Pedant.' 



CHAPTER XI 

PROSPECTIVE 

Nature not an Aggregate, but a Whole. All visible things are emblems, 
Clothes ; and exist for a time only. The grand scope of the Philosophy of 
Clothes. — Biographic Documents arrive. Letter from Heuschrecke on the 
importance of Biography, Heterogeneous character of the documents: 
Editor sorely perplexed ; but desperately grapples with his work. 

The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we pre- 
dicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless 
expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not 
without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as of 
an Elysian brightness ; the highly questionable purport and 
promise of which it is becoming more and more important for 
us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many 
a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava .? Is it 
of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the 
yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth ? 

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or 
inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and 
dizzier are the heights he leads us to ; more piercing, all- 
comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. 
For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a 
Whole: 

* Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist : " If I take the wings of 



56 SARTOR RESARTUS [book i. 

the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, 
God is there." Thou thyself, O cultivated reader, who too 
probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing God only 
by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at 
least FoECE is not ? The drop which thou shakest from thy 
wet hand, rests not where it falls, but tomorrow thou findest 
it swept away ; already on the wings of the Northwind, it is 
nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, 
and not lie motionless ? Thinkest thou there is ought 
motionless ; without Force, and utterly dead ? 

* As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself : That 
little fire which glows star-like across the dark-growing (nach- 
tende) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and 
thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe, — is it a detached, 
separated speck, cut-off from the whole Universe ; or indis- 
solubly joined to the whole ? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was 
(primarily) kindled at the Sun ; is fed by air that circulates 
from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar ; therein, 
with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force 
of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of 
Force brought about ; it is a little ganglion, or nervous 
centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if 
thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the 
All ; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence 
reach quite through the All ; whose dingy Priest, not by word, 
yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force ; 
nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet from 
the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force, command- 
ing, and one day to be all-commanding. 

' Detached, separated ! I say there is no such separation : 
nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside ; but all, were 
it only a withered leaf, works together with all ; is borne 
forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of Action, and 
lives through perpetual metamorphoses. The withered leaf 
is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, 
though working in inverse order; else how could it rot? 



CHAP. XI.] PROSPECTIVE 57 

Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the 
litter from which the earth makes Com. Rightly viewed 
no meanest object is insignificant ; all objects are as windows, 
through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself.' 

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy- Altar, 
what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will 
they sail with us ? 

' All visible things are emblems ; what thou seest is not 
there on its own account ; strictly taken, is not there at all : 
Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, 
and lody it forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable as we think 
them, are so unspeakably significant. Clothes, from the 
King's mantle downwards, are emblematic, nor of want only, 
but of a manifold cunning Victory ovgr Want. On the other 
hand, all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought- 
woven or hand- woven : must not the Imagination weave 
Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible creations 
and inspirations of our Reason are, like Spirits, revealed, and 
first become all-powerful ; — the rather if, as we often see, 
the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) 
reveal such even to the outward eye ? 

'Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, 
clothed with Beauty, with Ciu-ses, and the like. Nay, if you 
consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial 
Life, but an Emblem ; a Clothing or visible Garment for 
that divine Me of his, cast hither, like a light-particle, down 
from Heaven? Thus is he said also to be clothed with a 
Body. 

* Language is called the Garment of Thought : however, it 
should rather be. Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, 
of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this Flesh- 
Garment ; and does not she ? Metaphors are her stuff: 
examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive 
elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, 
recognised as such, or no longer recognised ; still fluid and 
florid, or now solid-grown and colourless.? If those same 



58 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 

primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh- 
Garment, Language, — ^then are Metaphors its muscles and 
tissues and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style 
you shall in vain seek for : is not your very Attention a 
Stretching-to ? The difference lies here : some styles are lean, 
adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous ; some are even 
quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others 
again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, 
sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic 
tendency. Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which over- 
hanging that same Thoughfs-Body (best naked), and decep- 
tively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false 
stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks {Putz-MdnteJ), and tawdry 
woollen rags : whereof he that runs and reads may gather 
whole hampers, — and bum them.' 

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever 
chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical ? However, 
that is not our chief grievance ; the Professor continues : 

' Why multiply instances ? It is written, the Heavens and 
the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture ; which indeed they 
are : the Time-vestm*e of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly 
exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a 
Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be 
laid ofil Thus in this one pregnant subject of Clothes, 
rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, 
dreamed, done, and been : the whole External Universe and 
what it holds is but Clothing ; and the essence of all Science 
lies in the Philosophy of Clothes.' 

Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, close-border- 
ing on the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, 
and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself 
journeying and straggling. Till lately a cheerful daystar of 
hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of Hofrath 
Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into 
the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncer- 
tain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For 



CHAP. XL] PROSPECTIVE 59 

the last week, these so-called Biographical Documents are in 
his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Merchant, 
whose name, kiiown to the whole mercantile world, he must 
not mention ; but whose honourable courtesy, now and often 
before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary 
stranger, he cannot soon forget, — ^the bulky Weissnichtwo 
Packet, with all its Customhouse seals, foreign hieroglyphs, 
and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect 
safety, and free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with 
what hot haste it was broken up, with what breathless expec- 
tation glanced over ; and, alas, with what unquiet disappoint- 
ment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and again 
taken up. 

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of 
compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, 
and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us of 
what we knew well already : that however it may be with 
Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating in the 
Head (Verstand) alone, no Life-Philosophy {Lehensphilosophie), 
such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which originates 
equally in the Character (Gemuth), and equally speaks thereto, 
can attain its significance till the Character itself is known 
and seen ; ' till the Author's View of the World ( Weltansicht), 
and how he actively and passively came by such view, are 
clear : in short till a Biography of him has been philosophico- 
poetically written, and philosophico-poetically read.' *Nay,' 
adds he, *were the speculative scientific Truth even known, 
you still, in this inquiring age, ask yourself, WTience came it, 
and Why, and How ? — and rest not, till, if no better may be. 
Fancy have shaped-out an answer ; and either in the authentic 
lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of Fiction, a complete 
picture and Genetical History of the Man and his spiritual 
Endeavour lies before you. But why,' says the Hofrath, and 
indeed say we, ' do I dilate on the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's 
Biography ? The great Herr Minister von Goethe has pene- 
tratingly remarked that "Man is properly the onli/ object 



60 SARTOR RESARTUS [book I. 

that interests man "" : thus I too have noted, that in Weiss- 
nichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing else but 
Biography or Auto-Biography ; ever humano-anecdotical 
(menschlich-anekdotiscK). Biography is by nature the most 
universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things : 
especially Biography of distinguished individuals. 

* By this time, mem Verehrtester (my Most Esteemed),' con- 
tinues he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be pur- 
loined from Teufelsdrockh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, 
is well-nigh unaccountable, * by this time you are fairly 
plunged (vertieft) in that mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy ; 
and looking round, as all readers do, with astonishment 
enough. Such portions and passages as you have already 
mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken a 
strange curiosity touching the mind they issued from ; the 
perhaps unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufac- 
tured such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. Had 
Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother ; did he, at one time, 
wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat ? Did he ever, in 
rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his ; looks he 
also wistfully into the long burial-aisle of the Past, where 
only winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate 
answer ? Has he fought duels ; — good Heaven ! how did he 
comport himself when in Love .? By what singular stair-steps, 
in short, and subterranean passages, and sloughs of Despair, 
and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderful pro- 
phetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now 
dwells ? 

* To all these natiu-al questions the voice of public History 
is as yet silent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a 
Pilgrim, and a Traveller from a far Country ; more or less 
footsore and travel-soiled ; has parted with road-companions ; 
fallen among thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered 
with bugbites ; nevertheless, at every stage (for they have let 
him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole 
particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, the 



CHAP. XL] PROSPECTIVE 61 

picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted 
down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior 
Penman), are these nowhere forthcoming? Perhaps quite 
lost : one other leaf of that mighty Volume (of human 
Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unbound 
up, as waste paper ; and to rot, the sport of rainy winds ? 

' No, verehrtester Herr Herausgeher, in no wise ! I here, 
by the unexampled favour you stand in with our Sage, send 
not a Biography only, but an Autobiography : at least the 
materials for such ; wherefrom, if I misreckon not, your 
perspicacity will draw fullest insight : and so the whole 
Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes will stand clear to the 
wondering eyes of England, nay thence, through America, 
through Hindostan, and the antipodal' New Holland, finally 
conquer (einnehmen) great part of this terrestrial Planet ! ' 

And now let the sympathising reader judge of our feeling 
when, in place of this same Autobiography with 'fullest 
insight,' we find — Six considerable Paper-Bags, carefully 
sealed, and marked successively, in gilt China-ink, with the 
symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs, beginning at 
Libra ; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous 
masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written in 
Professor Teufelsdrockh's scarce legible cursiv-schrifi ; and 
treating of all imaginable things under the Zodiac and above 
it, but of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and 
then in the most enigmatic manner. 

WTiole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he 
here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, 'the 
Wanderer,' is not once named. Then again, amidst what 
seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, ' Detached 
Thoughts on the Steam-engine,' or, ' The continued Possibility 
of Prophecy,' we shall meet with some quite private, not un- 
important Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, 
authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are 
omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, 
fly loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed 



62 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK I. 

also are long purely Autobiographical delineations ; yet with- 
out connexion, without recognisable coherence ; so unim- 
portant, so superfluously minute, they almost remind us of 
' P.P. Clerk of this Parish.' Thus does famine of intelligence 
alternate with waste. Selection, order, appears to be unknown 
to the Professor. In all Bags the same imbroglio ; only 
perhaps in the Bag Capricorn, and those near it, the confusion 
a little worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration, 
* On receiving the Doctor's-Hat,' lie wash-bills, marked hezahlt 
(settled). His Travels are indicated by the Street- Advertise- 
ments of the various cities he has visited ; of which Street- 
Advertisements, in most living tongues, here is perhaps the 
completest collection extant. 

So that if the Clothes- Volume itself was too like a Chaos, 
we have now instead of the solar Luminary that should still 
it, the airy Limbo which by intermixture will farther volatilise 
and discompose it ! As we shall perhaps see it our duty 
ultimately to deposit these Six Paper-Bags in the British 
Museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them, 
may be spared. Biography or Autobiography of Teufels- 
drockh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned here : at 
most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by 
unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on 
the side of Editor and of Reader, rise up between them. Only 
as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume 
can the contents of the Six Bags hover round us, and portions 
thereof be incorporated with our delineation of it. 

Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles) 
deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their per- 
plexed cursiv-schrift ; collating them with the almost equally 
unimaginable Volume, which stands in legible print. Over 
such a universal medley of high and low, of hot, cold, moist 
and dry, is he here struggling (by union of like with like, 
which is Method) to build a firm Bridge for British travellers. 
Never perhaps since our first Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, 
built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did 



CHAP. XL] PROSPECTIVE 63 

any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present 
Editor. For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly 
presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval one, the 
materials are to be fished-up from the weltering deep, and 
down from the simmering air, here one mass, there another, 
and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil beneath : nor 
is there any supernatural force to do it with ; but simply the 
Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor, 
endeavouring to evolve printed Creation out of a German 
printed and written Chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro 
in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why to the far-distant 
Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed 

up- 

Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does 

the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust 

health declining ; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep 

nightly leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system 

to be looked for. What is the use of health, or of life, if 

not to do some work therewith ? And what work nobler than 

transplanting foreign Thought into the barren domestic soil ; 

except indeed planting Thought of yoiu" own, which the fewest 

are privileged to do ? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of 

Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to reveal 

new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and already-budding 

germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not such a 

prize worth some striving? Forward with us, courageous 

reader ; be it towards failure, or towards success ! The latter 

thou sharest with us ; the former also is not all our own. 



BOOK SECOND 



CHAPTER I 
GENESIS 

Old Andreas Futteral and Gretchen his wife : their quiet home. Advent 
of a mysterious stranger, who deposits with them a young infant, the 
future Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. After-yearnings of the youth for 
his unknown Father. Sovereign power of Names and Naming. Diogenes 
a flourishing Infant. 

In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable 
whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinised 
soever, much insight is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in 
every phenomenon the Beginning remains always the most 
notable moment ; so, with regard to any great man, we rest 
not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole circumstances 
of his first appearance in this Planet, and what manner of 
Public Entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered 
manifest. To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, 
be this First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he 
seems to be of quite obscure extraction ; uncertain, we might 
alniost say, whether of any : so that this Genesis of his can 
properly be nothing but an Exodus (or transit out of Invisi- 
bility into Visibility) ; whereof the preliminary portion is 
nowhere forthcoming. 

* In the village of Entepfuhl,' thus writes he, in the Bag 
LibrUf on various Papers, which we arrange with difiiculty, 
* dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife ; childless, in still 
seclusion, and cheerful though now verging towards old age. 
Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant, and even regimental 



CHAP. L] GENESIS 65 

Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but now, quitting 
the halbert and ferule for the spade and pnming-hook, 
cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he, 
Cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the 
peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came in 
their season ; all which Andreas knew how to sell : on 
evenings he smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental 
Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbours that would listen 
about the Victory of Rossbach ; and how Fritz the Only 
(der Einzige) had once with his own royal lips spoken to 
him, had been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp-sentinel 
demanded the pass- word, " Schweig Hund (Peace, hound) ! " 
before any of his staff-adjutants could answer. " Das nen/ii 
ich mir einen Konig, There is what I call a King," would 
Andreas exclaim : " but the smoke of Kimersdorf was still 
smarting his eyes." 

^Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the 
deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran Othello, lived 
not in altogether military subordination ; for, as Andreas 
said, " the womankind will not drill (wer Jcann die Weiberchen 
dressiren) : nevertheless she at heart loved him both for 
valour and wisdom ; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and 
Regiment's Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and 
Cid : what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. 
Nay, was not Andreas in very deed a man of order, coxu-age, 
downrightness (Geradheit) ; that understood Biisching's Geo- 
grapTiy, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for 
dead in the camisade of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, 
for all her fretting, watched over him and hovered round him 
as only a true housemother can : assiduously she cooked and 
sewed and scoured for him ; so that not only his old 
regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habitation 
and environment, where on pegs of honour they hung, looked 
ever trim and gay : a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in 
fruit-trees and forest- trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising 
'many-coloured from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers strug- 



66 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

gling-in through the very windows ; under its long projecting 
eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to screen 
them from rain), and seats where, especially on summer nights, 
a King might have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. 
Such a Bauergut (Copyhold) had Gretchen given her veteran ; 
whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had 
made it what you saw. 

* Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening 
or dusk, when the Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial 
Entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible and radiant along 
the celestial Balance (Libra), it was that a Stranger of 
reverend aspect entered ; and, with grave salutation, stood 
before the two rather astonished housemates. He was close- 
muffled in a wide mantle; which without farther parley 
unfolding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some Basket, 
pverhung with green Persian silk ; saying only : Ihr lieben 
Leute, Titer hringe ein wnschdtzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in 
oiler Achty sorgfdltigst beniitzt es : mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl 
mit schweren Zinsen, wird's einst zuruckgefordert. f- " Good 
Christian people, here lies for you an invaluable Loan ; take 
all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it : with high 
recompense, or else with heavy penalty, Avill it one day be 
required back.""^ Uttering which singular words, in a clear, 
bell-like, forever memorable tone, the Stranger gracefully 
withdrew ; and before Andreas or his wife, gazing in expec- 
tant wonder, had time to fashion either question or answer, 
was clean gone. Neither out of doors could aught of him be 
seen or heard ; he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk ; 
the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed : the Stranger was gone 
once and always. So sudden had the whole transaction been, 
in the autumn stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that 
the Futterals could have fancied it all a trick of Imagination, 
or some visit from an authentic Spirit. Only that the green- 
silk Basket, such as neither Imagination nor authentic Spirits 
are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their 
little parlour-table. Towards this the astonished couple, now 



CHAP. I.J GENESIS 67 

with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting the 
green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, 
amid down and rich white wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or 
Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the softest sleep, a little red- 
coloured Infant ! Beside it, lay a roll of gold Friedrichs, the 
exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a Tawf- 
schem (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing 
but the Name was decipherable ; other document or indica- 
tion none whatever. 

* To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and 
always thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow 
or next day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the 
Stranger ; nor could the Traveller, who had passed through 
the neighbouring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with 
this Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. 
Meanwhile, for Andreas and his wife, the grand practical 
problem was : What to do with this little sleeping red- 
coloured Infant? Amid amazements and curiosities, which 
had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, as 
in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, 
on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and 
if possible into manhood. The Heavens smiled on their 
endeavour : thus has that same mysterious Individual ever 
since had a status for himself in this visible Universe, some 
modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground ; and now 
expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge of good and evil, he, as 
Heru Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, professes or is ready to profess, 
perhaps not altogether without effect, in the New University 
of Weissnichtwo, the new Science of Things in General.' 

Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think 
he well might, that these facts, first communicated, by the 
good Gretchen Futteral, in his twelfth year, ' produced on the 
boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible impression. A¥ho 
this reverend Personage,' he says, * that glided into the 
Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and then, as on 
spirit's wings, glided out again, might be .'' An inexpressible 



68 SARTOR RESARTUS [book il. 

desire, full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled 
within me to shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and 
my loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing {sehnsuchts- 
voll), to that unknown Father, who perhaps far from me, 
perhaps near, either way invisible, might have taken me to 
his paternal bosom, there to lie screened from many a woe. 
Thou beloved Father, dost thou still, shut out from me only 
by thin penetrable curtains of earthly Space, wend to and fro 
among the crowd of the living? Or art thou hidden by 
those far thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather 
of the Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye and 
outstretched arms need not strive to reach? Alas, I know 
not, and in vain vex myself to know. More than once, heart- 
deluded, have I taken for thee this and the other noble- 
looking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, with in- 
finite regard ; but he too had to repel me, he too was not thou. 

* And yet, O Man bom of Woman,' cries the Auto- 
biographer, with one of his sudden whirls, ' wherein is my 
case peculiar? Hadst thou, any more than I, a Father 
whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the 
Adam and Eve, who led thee into Life, and for a time 
suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest Father 
and Mother; these were, like mine, but thy nursing-father 
and nursing-mother : thy true Beginning and Father is in 
Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, 
but only with the spiritual.' 

' The little green veil,' adds he, among much similar moral- 
ising, and embroiled discoursing, ' I yet keep ; still more in- 
separably the Name, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the veil 
can nothing be inferred : a piece of now quite faded Persian 
silk, like thousands of others. On the Name I have many 
times meditated and conjectured ; but neither in this lay there 
any clue. That it was my unknown Father's name I must 
hesitate to believe. To no purpose have I searched through 
all the Herald's Books, in and without the German Empire, 
and through ajl manner of Subscriber-Lists (Pranumeranten), 



CHAP. L] GENESIS 69 

Militia-Rolls, and other Name -catalogues ; extraordinary 
names as we have in Germany, the name Tenfelsdrockh, except 
as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, what 
may the unchristian rather than Christian " Diogenes " mean ? 
Did that reverend Basket- bearer intend, by such designation, 
to shadow-forth my future destiny, or his own present malign 
humour ? Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred 
Parent, who like an Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred off- 
spring to be hatched into self-support by the mere sky-influ- 
ences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one ? 
Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been ; or indeed by 
the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have I 
fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and 
slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and 
bedevilled by the Time-Spirit (Zeitgeist) in thyself and others, 
till the good soiil first given thee was seared into grim rage ; 
and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant 
appeal to the Future, and living speaking Protest against the 
Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time 
itself, is well named ! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now 
modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air. 

'For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, 
nay almost all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment 
you wrap round the earth-visiting Me ; to which it thenceforth 
cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are Names that have 
lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin. And now 
from without, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, 
even to the centre ; especially in those plastic first-times, when 
the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain 
will grow to be an all overshadowing tree ! Names ? Could 
I unfold the influence of Names, which are the most important 
of all Clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not 
only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, 
if thou consider it, than a right Naming: Adam's first task 
was giving names to natural Appearances : what is ours still 
but a continuation of the same ; be the Appearances exotic- 



70 SARTOR RESARTUS [book II. 

vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry movements (as 
in Science) ; or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, 
God-attributes, Gods ? — In a very plain sense the Proverb 
says. Call one a thief, and he will steal ; in an almost similar 
sense may we not perhaps say. Call one Diogenes Teufels- 
drbckh, and he will open the Philosophy of Clothes ? ' 

' Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant 
of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to 
the kind Light ; sprawling-out his ten fingers and toes ; listen- 
ing, tasting, feeling ; in a word, by all his Five Senses, still 
more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of 
inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, endeavouring daily to 
acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe 
where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. In- 
finite was his progress ; thus in some fifteen months, he could 
perform the miracle of — Speech ! To breed a fresh Soul, is 
it not like brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg ; wherein as yet all 
is formless, powerless ; yet by degrees organic elements and 
fibres shoot through the watery albumen ; and out of vague 
Sensation grows Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, and we 
have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions ! 

' Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such 
diminutive had they in their fondness named him, travelled 
forward to those high consummations, by quick yet easy stages. 
The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover keep the 
roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave-out that he was a grand- 
nephew ; the orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly 
deceased, in Andreas's distant Prussian birthland ; of whom, 
as of her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough was known 
at Entepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nurseling took to 
his spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a 
still infant, that kept his mind much to himself ; above all, 
that seldom or never cried. He already felt that time was 
precious ; that he had other work cut-out for him than 
whimpering.' 



CHAP. II.] IDYLLIC 71 

Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these 
miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of 
Herr Teufelsdrockh's genealogy. More imperfect, more enig- 
matic it can seem to few readers than to us. The Professor, 
in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical 
turn, and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the present 
stands pledged in honoiir, so we will not doubt him : but 
seems it not conceivable that, by the ' good Gretchen Futteral,' 
or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been 
deceived ? Should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach 
the Entepfuhl Circulating Library, some cultivated native of 
that district might feel called to afford explanation. Nay, 
since Books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habit- 
able globe, and Timbuctoo itself is not safe from British 
Literature, may not some Copy find out even the mysterious 
basket-bearing Stranger, who in a state of extreme senility 
perhaps still exists ; and gently force even him to disclose 
himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel 
pride? 



CHAPTER II 
IDYLLIC 

Happy Childhood ! Entepfiihl : Sights, hearings and experiences of the 
boy Teuf elsdrockh ; their manifold teaching. Education ; what it can do, 
what cannot. Obedience our universal duty and destiny. Gneschen sees 
the good Gretchen pray. 

'Happy season of Childhood !' exclaims Teuf elsdrockh : 'Kind 
Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother ; that visitest the 
poor man's hut with auroral radiance ; and for thy Nurseling 
hast provided a soft swathing of Love and infinite Hope, 
wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced-round {umgaukelt) by 
sweetest Dreams ! K the paternal Cottage still shuts us in, ite 
roof still screens us ; with a Father we have as yet a prophet, 



72 SARTOR RESARTUS [book II. 

priest and king, and an Obedience that makes us free. The 
young spirit has awakened out of Eternity, and knows not 
what we mean by Time ; as yet Time is no fast-hurrying 
stream, but a sportfui sunht ocean ; years to the child are as 
ages : ah ! the secret of Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker 
decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the universal World- 
fabric, from the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, 
is yet unknown ; and in a motionless Universe, we taste, what 
afterwards in this quick-whirling Universe, is forever denied 
us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair Child, for thy long 
rough journey is at hand ! A little while, and thou too shalt 
sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles ; 
thou too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: 
" Rest ? Rest ? Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in ? " 
Celestial Nepenthe ! though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and 
an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not ; and thou 
hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids, on 
the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep and 
waking are one : the fair Life-garden rustles infinite around, 
and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope ; 
which budding, if in youth, too frostnipt, it grow to flowers, 
will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded 
stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the kernel.' 

In such rose-colotu-ed light does our Professor, as Poets are 
wont, look back on his childhood; the historical details of 
which (to say nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) 
he accordingly dwells on with an almost wearisome minuteness. 
We hear of Entepfuhl standing ' in trustful derangement ' 
among the woody slopes ; the paternal Orchard flanking it as 
extreme outpost from below ; the little Kuhbach gushing 
kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into 
the Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and 
Universe ; and how ' the brave old linden,' stretching like a 
parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all other rows 
and clumps, towered-up from the central Agora and Campus 
Martius of the Village, like its Sacred Tree ; and how the old 



CHAP. II.J IDYLLIC 73 

men sat talking under its shadow (Gneschen often greedily 
listening), and the wearied labourers reclined, and the 
unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens 
often danced to flute-music. * Glorious summer twilights,"" 
cries Teufelsdrockh, ' when the Sun, like a proud Conqueror and 
Imperial Taskmaster, turned his back, with his gold-purple 
emblazonry, and all his fireclad body-guard (of Prismatic 
Colours) ; and the tired brickmakers of this clay Earth might 
steal a little frolic, and those few meek Stars would not tell 
of them ! ' 

Then we have long details of the Weinlesen (Vintage), the 
Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so forth ; with a whole cycle 
of the Entepfuhl Children's-games, differing apparently by 
mere superficial shades from those of other countries. Con- 
cerning all which, we shall here, for obvious reasons, say 
nothing. What cares the world for our as yet miniature 
Philosopher's achievements under that ' brave old Linden' ? 
Or even where is the use of such practical reflections as the 
following ? ' In all the sports of Children, were it only in their 
wanton breakages and defacements, you shall discern a creative 
instinct (schaff'enden Trieb) : the Mankin feels that he is a 
born Man, that his vocation is to work. The choicest 
present you can make him is a Tool ; be it knife or pen-gun, 
for construction or for destruction ; either way it is for 
Work, for Change. In gregarious sports of skill or strength, 
the Boy trains himself to Cooperation, for war or peace, as 
governor or governed : the little Maid again, provident of her 
domestic destiny, takes with preference to Dolls.' 

Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering 
who it is that relates it : ' My first short-clothes were of 
yellow serge ; or rather, I should say, my first short-cloth, 
for the vesture was one and indivisible, reaching from neck to 
ankle, a mere body with four limbs : of which fashion how 
little could I then divine the architectural, how much less the 
moral significance ! ' 

More graceful is the following little picture : ' On fine even- 



74 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

ings I was wont to carry-forth my supper (bread-crumb boiled 
in milk), and eat it out-of-doors. On the coping of the 
Orchard-wall, which I could reach by climbing, or still more 
easily if Father Andreas would set-up the pruning-ladder, my 
porringer was placed : there, many a sunset, have I, looking 
at the distant western Mountains, consumed, not without 
relish, my evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that 
hush of World's expectation as Day died, were still a Hebrew 
Speech for me ; nevertheless I was looking at the fair illumin- 
ated Letters, and had an eye for their gilding.' 

With ' the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry ' we 
shall not much intermeddle. It may be that hereby he 
acquired a ' certain deeper sympathy with animated Nature ' : 
but when, we would ask, saw any man, in a collection of 
Biographical Documents, such a piece as this : ' Impressive 
enough (hedeutungsvolT) was it to hear, in early morning, the 
Swineherd's horn ; and know that so many hungry happy 
quadrupeds were, on all sides, starting in hot haste to join 
him, for breakfast on the Heath. Or to see them at even- 
tide, all marching-in again, with short squeak, almost in 
military order ; and each, topographically correct, trotting-off 
in succession to the right or left, through its own lane, to its 
own dwelling ; till old Kunz, at the Village-head, now left 
alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the night. We are 
wont to love the Hog chiefly in the form of Ham ; yet did 
not these bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest intelligence, 
perhaps humour of character ; at any rate, a touching, trust- 
ful submissiveness to Man, — who, were he but a Swineherd, 
in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling 
slate or discoloured-tin breeches, is still the Hierarch of this 
lower world ?' 

It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant 
of genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that cer- 
tain surprisingly favourable influences accompany him through 
life, especially through childhood, and expand him, while 
others lie closefolded and continue dunces. Herein, say they, 



chap.il] idyllic 75 

consists the whole difference between an inspired Prophet and 
a double-barrelled Game-preserver : the inner man of the one 
has been fostered into generous development ; that of the 
other, crushed-down perhaps by vigour of animal digestion, 
and the like, has exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps 
now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom of his stomach. 
' With which opinion,' cries Teufelsdrockh, ' I should as soon 
agree as with this other, that an acorn might, by favourable 
or unfavourable influences of soil and climate, be nursed into 
a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into an oak. 

' Nevertheless,' continues he, * I too acknowledge the ail-but 
omnipotence of early cultiu-e and nurture : hereby we have 
either a doddered dwarf bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadow- 
ing tree ; either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant 
green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially 
of all philosophers, to note-down with accuracy the character- 
istic circumstances of their Education, what furthered, what 
hindered, what in any way modified it : to which duty, nowa- 
days so pressing for many a German Autobiographer, I also 
zealously address myself.' — Thou rogue! Is it by short- 
clothes of yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that an infant 
of genius is educated.? And yet, as usual, it ever remains 
doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve at these Auto- 
biographical times of ours, or writing from the abundance of 
his own fond ineptitude. For he continues : ' If among the 
ever-streaming currents of Sights, Hearings, Feelings for Pain 
or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, young Gneschen 
went about environed, I might venture to select and specify, 
perhaps these following were also of the number : 

* Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, 
so the young creature's Imagination was stirred up, and a 
Historical tendency given him by the narrative habits of 
Father Andreas ; who, with his battle-reminiscences, and gray 
austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could not but appear 
another Ulysses and " much-enduring Man." Eagerly I hung 
upon his tales, when listening neighbours enlivened the hearth ; 



76 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

from these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as 
Hades itself, a dim world of Adventure expanded itself within 
me. Incalculable also was the knowledge I acquired in stand- 
ing by the Old Men under the Linden-tree : the whole of 
Immensity was yet new to me ; and had not these reverend 
seniors, talkative enough, been employed in partial siureys 
thereof for nigh fourscore years ? With amazement I began 
to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, 
of a World; that there was such a thing as History, as 
Biography; to which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, 
might contribute. 

'In a like sense worked the Postwagen (Stage-coach), 
which, slow-rolling under its mountains of men and luggage, 
wended through our Village : northwards, truly, in the dead 
of night; yet southwards visibly at eventide. Not till my 
eighth year did I reflect that this Postwagen could be other 
than some terrestrial Moon, rising and setting by mere Law 
of Nature, like the heavenly one ; that it came on made high- 
ways, from far cities towards far cities ; weaving them like a 
monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. It was then 
that, independently of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, I made this 
not quite insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual 
things) : Any road, this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to 
the end of the World! 

'Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa, as 
I learned, threading their way over seas and mountains, cor- 
porate cities and belligerent nations, yearly found themselves, 
with the month of May, snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby ? 
The hospitable Father (for cleanliness"* sake) had fixed a little 
bracket plumb under their nest : there they built, and caught 
flies, and twittered, and bred ; and all, I chiefly, from the 
heart loved them. Bright, nimble creatiures, who taught you 
the mason-craft ; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic incor- 
poration, almost social police ? For if, by ill chance, and when 
time pressed, your House fell, have I not seen five neigh- 
bourly Helpers appear next day; and swashing to and fro« 



CHAP. II.J IDYLLIC 77 

with animated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost 
super-hirundine, complete it again before nightfall ? 

* But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl chiWs- 
culture, where as in a funnel its manifold influences were 
concentrated and simultaneously poured-down on us, was the 
annual Cattle-fair. Here, assembling from all the four winds, 
came the elements of an unspeakable hurlyburly. Nutbrown 
maids and nutbrown men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, 
bedizened and beribanded ; who came for dancing, for treat- 
ing, and if possible, for happiness. Topbooted Graziers from 
the North ; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also topbooted, 
from the South ; these with their subalterns in leather jerkins, 
leather skull-caps, and long oxgoads ; shouting in half- 
articulate speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellow- 
ing. Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their crockery 
in fair rows ; Niirnberg Pedlars, in booths that to me seemed 
richer than Ormuz bazaars ; Showmen from the Lago Mag- 
giore ; detachments of the Wiener Schuh (Offscourings of 
Vienna) vociferously superintending games of chance. Ballad- 
singers brayed. Auctioneers grew hoarse ; cheap New Wine 
Qieuriger) flowed like water, still worse confounding the confu- 
sion ; and high over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, 
a particoloured Merry- Andrew, like the genius of the place 
and of Life itself. 

' Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence ; under the 
deep heavenly Firmament ; waited-on by the four golden Sea- 
sons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, for even grim 
Winter brought its skating-matches and shooting- matches, its 
snow-storms and Christmas-carols, — did the Child sit and 
learn. These things were the Alphabet, whereby in after- 
time he was to syllable and partly read the grand Volume of 
the World : what matters it whether such Alphabet be in 
large gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye 
to read it ? For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of 
looking thereon was a blessedness that gilded all : his existence 
was a bright, soft element of Joy ; out of which, as in 



78 SARTOR RESARTUS [book II. 

Prospero's Island, wonder after wonder bodied itself forth, to 
teach by charming. 

'Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even 
then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down 
from Heaven into the Earth. Among the rainbow colours 
that glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a dark ring 
of Care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often quite over- 
shone ; yet always it reappeared, nay ever waxing broader and 
broader ; till in after-years it almost over-shadowed my whole 
canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final night. It was 
the ring of Necessity whereby we are all begirt ; happy he for 
whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it into a ring of Duty, 
and plays roimd it with beautiful prismatic diffractions ; yet 
ever, as basis and as bourne for our whole being, it is there. 

' For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprenticeship, we 
have not much work to do ; but, boarded and lodged gratis, 
are set down mostly to look about us over the workshop, and 
see others work, till we have understood the tools a little, and 
can handle this and that. If good Passivity alone, and not 
good Passivity and good Activity together, were the thing 
wanted, then was my early position favourable beyond the 
most. In all that respects openness of Sense, affectionate 
Temper, ingenuous Ciu'iosity, and the fostering of these, what 
more could I have wished ? On the other side, however, 
things went not so well. My Active Power {Thatkrqfi) was 
unfavourably hemmed-in ; of which misfortune how many 
traces yet abide with me ! In an orderly house, where the 
litter of children's sports is hateful enough, your training is 
too stoical ; rather to bear and forbear than to make and do. 
I was forbid much : wishes in any measure bold I had to 
renounce ; everywhere a strait bond of Obedience inflexibly 
held me down. Thus already Freewill often came in painful 
collision vnth Necessity ; so that my tears flowed, and at seasons 
the Child itself might taste that root of bitterness, wherewith 
the whole fruitage of our life is mingled and tempered. 



CHAP. IL] IDYLLIC 79 

' In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was beyond 
measure safer to err by excess than by defect. Obedience is 
our universal duty and destiny ; wherein whoso will not bend 
must break : too early and too thoroughly we cannot be 
trained to know that Would, in this world of ours, is as mere 
zero to Should, and for most part as the smallest of fractions 
even to Shall. Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly 
Discretion, nay of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with 
my upbringing. It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively 
secluded, everyway imscientific : yet in that very strictness 
and domestic solitude might there not lie the root of deeper 
earnestness, of the stem from which all noble fruit must grow ? 
Above all, how unskilful soever, it was loving, it was well- 
meant, honest ; whereby every deficiency was helped. My 
kind Mother, for as such I must ever love the good Gretchen, 
did me one altogether invaluable service : she taught me, less 
indeed by word than by act and daily reverent look and 
habitude, her own simple version of the Christian Faith. 
Andreas too attended Church ; yet more like a parade-duty, 
for which he in the other world expected pay with arrears, — 
as, I trust, he has received ; but my Mother, with a true 
woman's heart, and fine though uncultivated sense, was in the 
strictest acceptation Religious. Jllow indestructibly the Good 
grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy entangle- 
ments of Evil ! ;^rhe highest whom I knew on Earth I here 
saw bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a Higher in 
Heaven : such things, especially in infancy, reach inwards to 
the very core of your being ; mysteriously does a Holy of 
Holies build itself into visibility in the mysterious deeps ; and 
Reverence, the divinest in man, springs forth undying from 
its mean envelopment of Fear. Wouldst thou rather be a 
peasant"'s son that knew, were it never so rudely, there was a 
God in Heaven and in Man ; or a duke's son that only knew 
there were two-and-thirty quarters on the family-coach ? ' 

To which last question we must answer : Beware, 
Teufelsdrockh, of spiritual pride ! 



80 SARTOR RESAETUS [book IL 



CHAPTER III 

PEDAGOGY 

Teiifelsdrockh's School. His Education. How the ever-flowing Kuhbach 
speaks of Time and Eternity. The Hinterschlag Gymnasium : rude Boys ; 
and pedant Professors. The need of true Teachers, and their due recog- 
nition. Father Andreas dies ; and Teufelsdrockh learns the secret of his 
birth: His reflections thereon. The Nameless University. Statistics of 
Imposture much wanted. Bitter fruits of Rationalism: Teufelsdrockh's 
religious difiBculties. The young Englishman Herr Towgood. Modern 
Friendship. 

Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible case of 
yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the arms of kind 
Natm-e alone ; seated, indeed, and much to his mind, in the 
terrestrial workshop, but (except his soft hazel eves, which we 
doubt not already gleamed with a still intelligence) called 
upon for little voluntary movement there. Hitherto, accord- 
ingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an incipient 
Philosopher and Poet in the abstract; perhaps it would 
puzzle Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special 
Doctrine of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. 
For with Gneschen, as with others, the Man may indeed stand 
pictu. ed in the Boy (at least all the pigments are there) ; 
yet only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or young 
Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his Active. The 
more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in 
this latter capacity; how, when, to use his own words, *he 
understands the tools a little, and can handle this or that,' 
he will proceed to handle it. 

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of 
oiu* Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost 
Hindoo character : nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and 
every- way excellent 'Passivity' of his, which, with no free 
developement of the antagonist Activity, distinguished his 
childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that, in 
after days, and still in these present days, astonishes the 



CHAP. III.] PEDAGOGY 81 

world. For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a 
man \^ ithout Activity of any kind, a No-man ; for the deep- 
sighted, again, a man with Activity almost superabundant, 
yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can 
foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so much 
as ascertain its significance. A dangerous, difficult temper for 
the modem Eiu-opean ; above all, disadvantageous in the 
hero of a Biography ! Now as heretofore it will behove the 
Editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do 
his endeavour. 

Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, 
especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. 
On this portion of his History, Teufelsdrockh looks down 
professedly as indifferent. Reading he 'cannot remember 
ever to have learned ' ; so perhaps had it by nature. He says 
generally : ' Of the insignificant portion of my Education, 
which depended on Schools, there need almost no notice be 
taken. I learned what others learn ; and kept it stored-by 
in a comer of my head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. 
My Schoolmaster, a downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot 
martyr, as others of that guild are, did little for me, except 
discover that he could do little : he, good soul, pronounced 
me a genius, fit for the learned professions ; and that I must 
be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the University. 
Meanwhile, what printed thing soever I could meet with I 
read. My very copper pocket-money I laid-out on stall- 
literature ; which, as it accumulated, I with my own hands 
sewed into volumes. By this means was the young head 
famished with a considerable miscellany of things and 
shadows of things : History in authentic fragments lay 
mingled with Fabulous chimeras, wherein also was reality; 
and the whole not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, 
tolerably nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic' 

That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well, we now know. 
Indeed, already in the youthful Gneschen, with all his out- 
ward stillness, there may have been manifest an inward 



82 SARTOR RESARTUS [book II. 

vivacity that promised much ; symptoms of a spirit singularly 
open, thoughtful, almost poetical. Thus, to say nothing of 
his Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and other phenomena of 
that earlier period, have many readers of these pages stumbled, 
in their twelfth year, on such reflections as the following? 
*It struck me much, as I sat by the Kuhbach, one silent 
noontide, and watched it flowing, gurgling, to think how this 
same streamlet had flowed and gurgled, through all changes 
of weather and of fortune, from beyond the earliest date of 
History. Yes, probably on the morning when Joshua forded 
Jordan ; even as at the mid-day when Csesar, doubtless with 
difficulty, swam the Nile, yet kept his Commentaries dry, — 
this little Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was 
murmuring on across the wilderness, as yet unnamed, unseen : 
here, too, as in the Euphrates and the Ganges, is a vein or 
veinlet of the grand World-circulation of Waters, which, 
with its atmospheric arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with 
the World. Thou fool ! Nature alone is antique, and the 
oldest art a mushroom ; that idle crag thou sittest on is six- 
thousand years of age.' In which little thought, as in a 
little fountain, may there not lie the beginning of those 
well-nigh unutterable meditations on the grandeur and 
mystery of Time, and its relation to Eternity, which play 
such a part in this Philosophy of Clothes ? 

Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by no 
means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. 
Green sunny tracts there are still ; but intersected by bitter 
rivulets of tears, here and there stagnating into sour marshes 
of discontent. 'With my first view of the Hinterschlag 
Gymnasium,' writes he, ' my evil days began. Well do I still 
remember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when, trotting 
full of hope by the side of Father Andreas, I entered the 
main street of the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then 
striking Eight) and Schuldthurm (Jail), and the aproned or 
disaproned Burghers moving-in to breakfast : a little dog, in 
mad terror, was rushing past ; for some human imps had tied 



CHAP. III.] PEDAGOGY 83 

a tin-kettle to its tail ; thus did the agonised creature, loud- 
jingling, career through the whole length of the Borough, 
and become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Con- 
quering Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it 
often elsewhere does) has milignantly appended a tin-kettle of 
Ambition, to chase him on ; which the faster he runs, urges 
him the faster, the more loudly and more foolishly ! Fit 
emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that mis- 
chievous Den ; as in the World, whereof it was a portion 
and epitome ! 

'Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in 
the distance : I was among strangers, harshly, at best 
indifferently, disposed towards me ; the young heart felt, for 
the first time, quite orphaned and alone.** His schoolfellows, as 
is usual, persecuted him : ' They were Boys,' he says, ' mostly 
rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, which 
bids the deerherd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock 
put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all 
hands the strong tyrannise over the weak.' He admits that 
though ' perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous,' he 
succeeded ill in battle, and would fain have avoided it ; a 
result, as would appear, owing less to his small personal 
statiure (for in passionate seasons he was ' incredibly nimble ' ), 
than to his ' virtuous principles ' : ' if it was disgraceful to 
be beaten,' says he, ' it was only a shade less disgraceful to 
have so much as fought ; thus was I drawn two ways at once, 
and in this important element of school-history, the war- 
element, had little but sorrow.' On the whole, that same 
excellent ' Passivity,' so notable in Teufelsdrockh's childhood, 
is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. ' He wept 
often ; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed Dcr 
Weinende (the Tearful), which epithet, till towards his 
thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited. Only at rare 
intervals did the young soul burst-forth into fire-eyed rage, 
and, with a stormftilness {Ungestum) imder which the boldest 
quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or at least of 



84 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

Mankin.' In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree 
and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, 
reed-grass and ignoble shrubs ; and forced if it would live, to 
struggle upwards only, and not outwards ; into a height quite 
sickly, and disproportioned to its breadth ? 

We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were 
* mechanically ' taught; Hebrew scarce even mechanically; 
much else which they called History, Cosmography, Philo- 
sophy, and so forth, no better than not at all. So that, 
except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and he himself 
'went about, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen's 
workshops, there learning many things ' ; and farther lighted 
on some small store of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the 
Cooper's house, where he lodged, — ^his time, it would appear, 
was utterly wasted. Which facts the Professor has not yet 
learned to look upon with any contentment. Indeed, 
throughout the whole of this Bag Scorpio, where we now 
are, and often in the following Bag, he shows himself unusually 
animated on the matter of Education, and not without some 
touch of what we might presume to be anger. 

' My Teachers,' says he, ' were hide-bound Pedants, without 
knowledge of man's nature, or of boy's ; or of aught save 
their lexicons and quarterly account-books. Innumerable 
dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they themselves knew 
no Language) they crammed into us, and called it fostering 
the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical 
Gerund grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent 
century, be manufactured at Numberg out of wood and 
leather, foster the growth of anything ; much more of Mind, 
which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots littered 
with etymological compost), but like a spirit, by mysterious 
contact of Spirit ; Thought kindling itself at the fire of living 
Thought ? How shall he give kindling, in whose own inward 
man there is no live coal, but all is burnt-out to a dead 
grammatical cinder ? The Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax 
enough ; and of the human soul thus much : that it had a 



CHAP. III.J PEDAGOGY 85 

faculty called Memory, and could be acted-on through the 
muscular integument by appliance of birch-rods. 

' Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be ; till the Hod- 
man is discharged, or reduced to hodbearing ; and an 
Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged : till 
commtmities and individuals discover, not without surprise, 
that fashioning the souls of a generation by Kiiowledge can 
rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by 
Gunpowder ; that with Generals and Fieldmarshals for killing, 
there should be world-honoured Dignitaries, and were it 
possible, true God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as 
yet, though the Soldier wears openly, and even parades, his 
butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the 
Schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool : nay, were he 
to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom 
expected honom-, would there not, among the idler class, 
perhaps a certain levity be excited ? "* 

In the third year of this Gymnasic period. Father Andreas 
seems to have died : the young Scholar, otherwise so 
maltreated, saw himself for the first time clad outwardly in 
sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible melancholy. ' The 
dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned 
open ; the pale kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable 
silent nations and generations, stood before him ; the 
inexorable word. Never ! now first showed its meaning. My 
Mother wept, and her sorrow got vent ; but in my heart there 
lay a whole lake of tears, pent-up in silent desolation. 
Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is strong ; Life is so healthful 
that it even finds nourishment in Death : these stern 
experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination, 
rose there to a whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful ; waving, 
with not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the 
hottest sunshine, through long years of youth : — as in 
manhood also it does, and will do ; for I have now pitched 
my tent under a Cypress- tree ; the Tomb is now my inex- 
pugnable Fortress, ever close by the gate of which I look 



86 SARTOR RESARTUS [book II. 

upon the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties of 
tyrannous Life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest 
threatenings with a still smile. O ye loved ones, that 
already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I 
could only weep for and never help ; and ye, who wide- 
scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing 
the flinty ground with your blood, — ^yet a little while, and 
we shall all meet there, and our Mother's bosom will screen 
us all ; and Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's fire- whip, and 
all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed 
Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more !' 

Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a laboured 
Character of the deceased Andreas Futteral ; of his natural 
ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian Sergeant) ; with long 
historical inquiries into the genealogy of the Futteral Family, 
here traced back as far as Henry the Fowler : the whole of 
which we pass over, not without astonishment. It only 
concerns us to add, that now was the time when Mother 
Gretchen revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of 
this kindred ; or indeed of any kindred, having come into 
historical existence in the way already known to us. ' Thus 
was I doubly orphaned,' says he ; ' bereft not only of Pos- 
session, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Wonder, 
here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit. 
Such a disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through 
my whole nature : ever till the years of mature manhood, it 
mingled with my whole thoughts, was as the stem whereon all 
my day-dreams and night-dreams grew. A certain poetic 
elevation, yet also a corresponding civic depression, it naturally 
imparted : I was like no other ; in which fixed-idea, leading 
sometimes to highest, and oftener to frightfullest results, may 
there not lie the first spring of tendencies, which in my Life have 
become remarkable enough? As in birth, so in action, specula- 
tion, and social position, my fellows are perhaps not numerous.* 

In the Bag Sagittarius, as we at length discover, Teufels- 



CHAP. III.] PEDAGOGY 87 

drockh has become a University man ; though how, when, or 
of what quality, will nowhere disclose itself with the smallest 
certainty. Few things, in the way of confusion and capricious 
indistinctness, can now surprise our readers ; not even the 
total want of dates, almost without parallel in a Biographical 
work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and 
must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In Sagit- 
tarius, however, Teufelsdrockh begins to show himself even 
more than usually Sibylline : fragments of all sorts ; scraps of 
regular Memoir, College-Exercises, Programs, Professional 
Testimoniums, Milkscores, torn Billets, sometimes to appear- 
ance of an amatory cast ; all blown together as if by merest 
chance, henceforth bewilder the sane Historian. To combine 
any picture of these University, and the subsequent, years ; 
much more, to decipher therein any illustrative primordial 
elements of the Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem 
as the reader may imagine. 

So much we can see ; darkly, as through the foliage of 
some wavering thicket : a youth of no common endowment, 
who has passed happily through Childhood, less happily yet 
still vigorously through Boyhood, now at length perfect in 
* dead vocables,' and set down, as he hopes, by the living 
Fountain, there to superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From 
such Fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet never or 
seldom vtdth his whole heart, for the water nowise suits his 
palate ; discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are dis- 
coverable or supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary 
distresses wanting ; for * the good Gretchen, who in spite of 
advices from not disinterested relatives has sent him hither, 
must after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand.' 
Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold 
Chagrin, the Humour of that young Soul, what character is 
in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine 
in weeping skies, gives out variety of colours, some of which 
are prismatic. Thus, with the aid of Time and of what 
Time brings, has the stripling Diogenes Teufelsdrockh waxed 



88 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

into manly stature ; and into so questionable an aspect, that 
we ask with new eagerness, How he specially came by it, and 
regret anew that there is no more explicit answer. Certain 
of the intelligible and partially significant fragments, which 
are few in number, shall be extracted from that Limbo of a 
Paper-bag, and presented with the usual preparation. 

As if, in the Bag Scorpio, Teufelsdrockh had not already 
expectorated his antipedagogic spleen ; as if, from the name 
Sagittarius, he had thought himself called upon to shoot 
arrows, we here again fall-in with such matter as this : * The 
University where I was educated still stands vivid enough in 
my remembrance, and I know its name well ; which name, 
however, I, from tenderness to existing interests and persons, 
shall in nowise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, 
out of England and Spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto 
discovered Universities. This is indeed a time when right 
Education is, as nearly as may be, impossible : however, in 
degrees of wrongness there is no limit : nay, I can conceive a 
worse system than that of the Nameless itself; as poisoned 
victual may be worse than absolute hunger. 

* It is vmtten. When the blind lead the blind, both shall 
fall into the ditch : wherefore, in such circumstances, may it 
not sometimes be safer, if both leader and lead simply — sit 
still? Had you, anywhere in Crim Tartary, walled-in a 
square enclosure; furnished it with a small, ill-chosen Library; 
and then turned loose into it eleven-hundred Christian strip- 
lings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to seven 
years : certain persons, under the title of Professors, being 
stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a 
University, and exact considerable admission-fees, — ^you had, 
not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit and result, 
some imperfect resemblance of our High Seminary. I say, 
imperfect ; for if our mechanical structure was quite other, so 
neither was oiu* result altogether the same : unhappily, we 
were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, 
full of smoke and sin ; moreover, in the middle of a Public, 



CHAP. III.] PEDAGOGY 89 

which, without far costlier apparatus than that of the Square 
Enclosure, and Declaration aloud, you could not be sure of 
gulling. 

' Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are ; 
and gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards any- 
thing like a Statistics of Imposture, indeed, little as yet has 
been done : with a strange indifference, our Economists, nigh 
buried under Tables for minor Branches of Industry, have 
altogether overlooked the grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy 
Branch ; as if our whole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, Priest- 
craft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and 
mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive 
Industry at all ! Can any one, for example, so much as say, 
What moneys, in Literature and Shoeblacking, are realised 
by actual instruction and actual jet Polish ; what by fictitious- 
persuasive Proclamation of such ; specifying, in distinct items, 
the distributions, circulations, disbursements, incomings of said 
moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy ? But to 
ask. How far, in all the several infinitely-complected depart- 
ments of social business, in government, education, in manual, 
commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want 
is supplied by true Ware ; how far by the mere Appearance 
of true Ware : — in other words. To what extent, by what 
methods, with what effects, in various times and countries. 
Deception takes the place of wages of Performance : here truly 
is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which 
hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the 
present, in om: Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to 
Appearance of Ware so high even as at One to a Hundred 
(which, considering the Wages of a Pope, Russian Autocrat, 
or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far from the 
mark), — ^what almost prodigious saving may there not be 
anticipated, as the Statistics of Imposture advances, and so the 
manufactxuing of Shams (that of Realities rising into clearer 
and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at 
length becomes all but wholly imnecessary ! 



90 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

* This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, 
for the present brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in 
Education, Polity, Religion, where so much is wanted and in- 
dispensable, and so little can as yet be furnished, probably 
Imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature, and man's Gulli- 
bility not his worst blessing. Suppose your sinews of war 
quite broken ; I mean your military chest insolvent, forage all 
but exhausted ; and that the whole army is about to mutiny, 
disband, and cut your and each other's throat, — ^then were it 
not well could you, as if by miracle, pay them in any sort of 
fairy-money, feed them on coagulated water, or mere imagina- 
tion of meat ; whereby, till the real supply came up, they 
might be kept together and quiet ? Such perhaps was the 
aim of Nature, who does nothing without aim, in furnishing 
her favourite, Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather 
omnipatient Talent of being Gulled. 

* How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism ; nay, 
almost makes mechanism for itself ! These Professors in the 
Nameless lived with ease, with safety, by a mere Reputation, 
constructed in past times, and then too with no great eifort, 
by quite another class of persons. Which Reputation, like a 
strong, brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into the general cur- 
rent, bade fair, with only a little annual repainting on their 
part, to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously 
grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the Millers ! 
They themselves needed not to work ; their attempts at 
working, at what they called Educating, now when I look back 
on it, fill me with a certain mute admiration. 

'Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational University; 
in the highest degree hostile to Mysticism ; thus was the young 
vacant mind furnished with much talk about Progress of the 
Species, Dark Ages, Prejudice, and the like ; so that all were 
quickly enough blown out into a state of windy argumentative- 
ness ; whereby the better sort had soon to end in sick, impo- 
tent Scepticism ; the worser sort explode {crepiren) in finished 
Self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents become dead. — But 



CHAP. III.] PEDAGOGY 91 

this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our era is the Era of 
Unbelief, why murmur under it ; is there not a better coming, 
nay come ? As in long-drawn systole and long-drawn diastole, 
must the period of Faith alternate with the period of Denial ; 
must the vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, 
Spiritual Representations and Creations, be followed by, and 
again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. For 
man lives in [Time, has his whole earthly being, endeavour and 
destiny shaped for him by Time :/ only in the transitory Time- 
Symbol is the ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made 
manifest. And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it is for 
the nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have been 
born, and to be awake and work ; and for the duller a felicity, 
if, like hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca 
University, or Sybaris City, or other superstitious or voluptu- 
ous Castle of Indolence, they can slumber-through in stupid 
dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaring hailstorms 
have all done their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms 
the new Spring has been vouchsafed.' 

That in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed 
forth Teufelsdrockh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be 
doubtful. ' The hungry young,' he says, ' looked up to their 
spiritual Nurses ; and, for food, were bidden eat the east- wind. 
What vain jargon of controversial Metaphysic, Etymology, and 
mechanical Manipulation falsely named Science, was current 
there, I indeed learned, better perhaps than the most. Among 
eleven-hundred Christian youths, there will not be wanting 
some eleven eager to learn. By collision with such, a certain 
warmth, a certain polish was commimicated ; by instinct and 
happy accident, I took less to rioting (renommiren), than to 
thinking and reading, which latter also I was free to do. Nay 
from the chaos of that Library, I succeeded in fishing-up more 
books perhaps than had been known to the very keepers 
thereof. The foundation of a Literary Life was hereby laid . 
I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in almost all 
cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences; 



92 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

farther, as man is ever the prime object to man, already it 
was my favourite employment to read character in speculation, 
and from the Writing to construe the Writer. A certain 
groundplan of Human Nature and Life began to fashion itself 
in me ; wondrous enough, now when I look back on it ; for 
my whole Universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a 
Machine ! However, such a conscious, recognised groundplan, 
the truest I had, was beginning to be there, and by additional 
experiments might be corrected and indefinitely extended.' 

Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth ; 
thus in the destitution of the wild desert does our young 
Ishmael acquire for himself the highest of all possessions, that 
of Self-help. Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howl- 
ing with savage monsters. Teufelsdrockh gives us long details 
of his * fever-paroxysms of Doubt'; his Inquiries concerning 
Miracles, and the Evidences of religious Faith ; and how ' in 
the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over 
sky and earth, he has cast himself before the All-seeing, and 
with audible prayers cried vehemently for Light, for deliver- 
ance from Death and the Grave. Not till after long years, 
and unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender ; 
sink into spell-bound sleep, under the nightmare. Unbelief; 
and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world 
for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But 
through such Purgatory pain,' continues he, ' it is appointed 
us to pass ; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself 
dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of 
Religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is to arise on us, 
newborn of Heaven, and with new healing under its wings.' 

To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we 
add a liberal measure of Earthly distresses, want of practical 
guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, want of hope ; 
and all this in the fervid season of youth, so exaggerated in 
imagining, so boundless in desires, yet here so poor in 
means, — do we not see a strong incipient spirit oppressed and 
overloaded from without and from within ; the fire of genius 



CHAP. III.] PEDAGOGY 93 

struggling-up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet 
with more of bitter vapour than of clear flame ? 

From various fragments of Letters and other documentary 
scraps, it is to be inferred that Teufelsdrockh, isolated, shy, 
retiring as he was, had not altogether escaped notice : 
certain established men are aware of his existence ; and, if 
stretching-out no helpful hand, have at least their eyes on 
him. He appears, though in dreary enough humour, to be 
addressing himself to the Profession of Law; — ^whereof, 
indeed, the world has since seen him a public graduate. But 
omitting these broken, unsatisfactory thrums of Economical 
relation, let us present rather the following small thread of 
Moral relation ; and therewith, the reader for himself weaving 
it in at the right place, conclude our dim arras-picture of 
these University years. 

* Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr 
Towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written, Herr Toughgut ; 
a young person of quality (von AdeV), from the interior parts 
of England. He stood connected, by blood and hospitality, 
with the Counts von Zahdarm, in this quarter of Germany ; 
to which noble Family I likewise was, by his means, with all 
friendliness, brought near. Towgood had a fair talent, 
unspeakably ill-cultivated; with considerable humour of 
character : and, bating his total ignorance, for he knew 
nothing except Boxing and a little Grammar, showed less of 
that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for most 
part belongs to Travellers of his nation. To him I owe my 
first practical knowledge of the English and their ways ; per- 
haps also something of the partiality with which I have ever 
since regarded that singular people. Towgood was not with- 
out an eye, could he have come at any light. Invited 
doubtless by the presence of the Zahdarm Family, he had 
travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting his 
studies ; he, whose studies had as yet been those of infancy, 
hither to a University where so much as the notion of per- 
fection, not to say the effort after it, no longer existed ! Often 



94 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

we would condole over the hard destiny of the Young in this 
era : how, after all our toil, we were to be turned-out into 
the world, with beards on our chins indeed, but with few 
other attributes of manhood ; no existing thing that we were 
trained to Act on, nothing that we could so much as Believe. 
" How has our head on the outside a polished Hat," would 
Towgood exclaim, "and in the inside Vacancy, or a froth of 
Vocables and Attorney-Logic ! At a small cost men are 
educated to make leather into shoes ; but at a great cost, 
what am I educated to make ? By Heaven, Brother ! what I 
have already eaten and worn, as I came thus far, would endow 
a considerable Hospital of Incurables."" — " Man, indeed," I 
would answer, " has a Digestive Faculty, which must be kept 
working, were it even partly by stealth. But as for our Mis- 
education, make not bad worse ; waste not the time yet ours, 
in trampling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. 
Frisch zu, Bruder ! Here are Books, and we have brains to 
read them ; here is a whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and 
we have eyes to look on them : Frisch zu ! " 

' Often also our talk was gay ; not without brilliancy, and 
even fire. We looked-out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, 
where all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and 
quartered : motley, not unterrific was the aspect; but we looked 
on it like brave youths. For myself, these were perhaps my 
most genial hours. Towards this young warmhearted, strong- 
headed and wrongheaded Herr Towgood I was even near 
experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, 
foolish Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain condi- 
tions, I could have loved this man, and taken him to my 
bosom, and been his brother once and always. By degrees, 
however, I understood the new time, and its wants. K man's 
Soul is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, and Utilitarian 
Philosophy, a kind of Stomach, what else is the true meaning 
of Spiritual Union but an Eating together ? Thus we, instead 
of Friends, are Dinner-guests ; and here as elsewhere have 
cast away chimeras.' 



CHAP. IV.] GETTING UNDER WAY 95 

So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little 
incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave 
Herr Towgood, or Toughgut ? He has dived-under, in the 
Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we see not where. Does 
any reader ' in the interior parts of England ' know of such a 
man? 



CHAPTER IV 

GETTING UNDER WAY 

The grand thaumaturgic Art of Thought. Difficulty in fitting Capability 
to Opportunity, or of getting under way. The advantage of Hunger and 
Bread-Studies. Teufelsdrockh has to enact the stern monodrama of Ifo 
object and no rest. SuflEerings as Auscultator. Given up as a man of 
genius. Zahdarm House. Intolerable presumption of young men. Irony 
and its consequences. Teuf elsdrockh's Epitaph on Count Zahdarm. 

* Thus nevertheless,' writes our Autobiographer, apparently as 
quitting College, 'was there realised Somewhat; namely, I, 
Diogenes Teufelsdrockh : a visible Temporary Figure (Zeit- 
hild\ occupying some cubic feet of Space, and containing 
within it Forces both physical and spiritual ; hopes, passions, 
thoughts ; the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less per- 
fection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities 
there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against 
the great Empire of Darkness : does not the very Ditcher and 
Delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle ; 
and so leave a little Order, where he found the opposite .? Nay 
your very Daymoth has capabilities in this kind ; and ever 
organises something (into its own Body, if no otherwise), 
which was before Inorganic ; and of mute dead air makes 
living music, though only of the faintest, by humming. 

' How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual ; who 
has learned, or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of 
Thought ! Thaumaturgic I name it ; for hitherto all Miracles 
have been wrought thereby, and henceforth innumerable will 



96 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

be wrought ; whereof we, even in these days, witness some. Of 
the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it makes 
and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention : but 
cannot the dullest hear Steam-Engines clanking around him ? 
Has he not seen the Scottish Brassmith's Idea (and this but a 
mechanical one) travelling on fire- wings round the Cape, and 
across two Oceans ; and stronger than any other Enchanter's 
Familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetching and carrying : at 
home, not only weaving Cloth ; but rapidly enough overturn- 
ing the whole old system of Society ; and, for Feudalism and 
Preservation of the Game, preparing us, by indirect but sure 
methods. Industrialism and the Government of the Wisest ? 
•'Truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of 
Darkness can have ; every time such a one announces himself, 
I doubt not, there runs a shudder through the Nether 
Empire ; and new Emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, 
if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him. 

*With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the 
Universe, been called. Unhappy it is, however, that though 
bom to the amplest Sovereignty, in this way, with no less 
than sovereign right of Peace and War against the Time- 
Prince (Zeitfursi), or Devil, and all his Dominions, your 
coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre is so 
difficult to get at, or even to get eye on ! ' 

By which last wiredrawn similitude does Teufelsdrockh 
mean no more than that young men find obstacles in what we 
call * getting under way' ? ' Not what I Have,' continues he, 
*but what I Do is my Kingdom. To each is given a certain 
inward Talent, a certain outward Environment of Fortune ; to 
each, by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum 
of Capability. But the hardest problem were ever this first : 
To find by study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on, 
what your combined inward and outward Capability specially 
is. For, alas, our young soul is all budding with Capabilities, 
and we see not yet which is the main and true one. Always 
too the new man is in a new time, under new conditions ; his 



CHAP. IV.] GETTING UNDER WAY 97 

course can be the facsimile of no prior one, but is by its nature 
original. And then how seldom will the outward Capability 
fit the inward : though talented wonderfully enough, we are 
poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful ; nay what is worse 
than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of 
Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is 
ours, and often clutch the wrong one : in this mad work must 
several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind 
Youth, by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a 
seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole term, and in 
ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from 
enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side : till at length, 
as exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift into 
their last enterprise, that of getting buried. 

* Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be 
the general fate ; were it not that one thing saves us : our 
Hunger. For on this ground, as the prompt nature of 
Hunger is well known, must a prompt choice be made : hence 
have we, with wise foresight, Indentm'es and Apprenticeships 
for om' irrational young ; whereby, in due season, the vague 
universality of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded into a 
specific Craftsman ; and so thenceforth work, with much or 
with little waste of Capability as it may be ; yet not with the 
worst waste, that of time. Nay even in matters spiritual, 
since the spiritual artist too is bom blind, and does not, like 
certain other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but far 
later, sometimes never, — ^is it not well that there should be 
what we call Professions, or Bread-studies {Brodzwecke), pre- 
appointed us ? Here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom 
partial or total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can travel 
contentedly round and round, still fancying that it is forward 
and forward ; and realise much : for himself victual ; for 
the world an additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill 
or hemp-mill of Economic Society. For me too had such a 
leading-string been provided ; only that it proved a neck- 
halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I broke it ofi; Then, 



98 SARTOR RESARTUS [book il 

in the words of Ancient Pistol, did the world generally 
become miae oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, was 
to open, as I would and could. Almost had I deceased 
{Just war ich umgeJcommen), so obstinately did it continue 
shut.' 

We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much 
that was to befall our Autobiographer ; the historical 
embodiment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his Life, 
lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, through this Bag 
Pisces, and those that follow. A yoimg man of high talent, 
and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt, 
*breaks-off his neck-halter,' and bounds forth, from his 
peculiar manger, into the wide world ; which, alas, he finds 
all rigorously fenced-in. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye ; 
but to him they are forbidden pasture : either pining in pro- 
gressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, 
must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone- walls, which 
he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him ; till 
at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by 
miracle, clears his way ; not indeed into luxiu-iant and luxiu:i- 
ous clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence 
is still possible, and Freedom, though waited on by Scarcity, 
is not without sweetness. In a word, Teufelsdrockh having 
thrown-up his legal Profession, finds himself without landmark 
of outward guidance ; whereby his previous want of decided 
Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity 
urges him on ; ■ Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son of 
Time ; ^ wild passions without solacement, wild faculties with- 
out employment, ever vex and agitate him. He too must 
enact that stern Monodrama, No Object and no Rest ; must 
front its successive destinies, work through to its catastrophe, 
and deduce therefrom what moral he can. 

Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his 'neck- 
halter ' sat nowise easy on him ; that he was in some degree 
forced to break it ofi; If we look at the young man's civic 
position, in. this Nameless capital, as he emerges from its 



CHAP. IV.] GETTING UNDER WAY 99 

Nameless University, we can discern well that it was far from 
enviable. His first Law-Examination he has come through 
triumphantly ; and can even boast that the Examen Rigorosum 
need not have frightened him : but though he is hereby ' an 
AuscuUator of respectability,' what avails it ? There is next 
to no employment to be had. Neither, for a youth without 
connexions, is the process of Expectation very hopeful in 
itself; nor for one of his disposition much cheered from 
without. * My fellow Auscultators,' he says, ' were Ausculta- 
tors : they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words ; 
other vitality showed they almost none. Small speculation in 
those eyes, that they did glare withal ! Sense neither for the 
high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save 
only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment.' In which 
words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufels- 
drockh, may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from 
wounded vanity ? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may 
have sniffed at him, with his strange ways ; and tried to hate, 
and what was much more impossible, to despise him. Friendly 
communion, in any case, there could not be : already has the 
young Teufelsdrockh left the other young geese ; and swims 
apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet 
or gosling. 

Perhaps, too, what httle employment he had was performed 
ill, at best unpleasantly. 'Great practical method and ex- 
pertness' he may brag of ; but is there not also great practical 
pride, though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated ? So shy a 
man can never, have been popular. We figure to om-selves, 
how in those days he may have played strange freaks with his 
independence, and so forth : do not his own words betoken as 
much ? * like a very young person, I imagined it was with 
Work alone, and not also with Folly and Sin, in myself and 
others, that I had been appointed to struggle.' Be this as it 
may, his progress from the passive Auscultatorship, towards 
any active Assessorship, is evidently of the slowest. By 
degrees, those same established men, once partially inclined to 



100 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

patronise him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and give 
him up as ' a man of genius ' : against which procedure he, in 
these Papers, loudly protests. * As if,' says he, * the higher 
did not presuppose the lower ; as if he who can fly into 
heaven, could not also walk post if he resolved on it ! But 
the world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for 
a gold coin ; whereby being often cheated, she will thence- 
forth trust nothing but the common copper.' 

How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial 
runner, contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from fly- 
ing skjrward without retimi, is not too clear from these Docu- 
ments. Good old Gretchen seems to have vanished from the 
scene, perhaps from the Earth ; other Horn of Plenty, or even 
of Parsimony, nowhere flows for him ; so that ' the prompt 
nature of Hunger being well known,' we are not without our 
anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many languages 
and sciences, the aid derivable is small ; neither, to use his 
own words, ' does the young Adventurer hitherto suspect in 
himself any literary gift ; but at best earns bread-and- water 
wages, by his wide faculty of Translation. Nevertheless,' 
continues he, ' that I subsisted is clear, for you find me even 
now alive.' Which fact, however, except upon the principle 
of our true-hearted, kind old Proverb, that * there is always 
life for a living one,' we must profess ourselves unable to 
explain. 

Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, 
bearing the mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not with- 
out money ; but, like an independent Hearth-holder, if not 
House-holder, paid his way. Here also occur, among many 
others, two little mutilated Notes, which perhaps throw light 
on his condition. The first has now no date, or writer's 
name, ' but a huge Blot ; and runs to this efifect : ' The 
(Inkblot), tied-down by previous promise, cannot, except by 
best wishes, forward the Herr Teufelsdrockh's views on the 
A-Ssessorship in question ; and sees himself under the cruel 
necessity of forbearing, for the present, what were otherwise 



CHAP. IV.] GETTING UNDER WAY 101 

his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man 
of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting/ 
The other is on gilt paper ; and interests us like a sort of 
epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and bene- 
ficently worked. We give it in the original : * Herr Tewfels- 
drbckh wird von der Frau Grdjlnn, auf Donnerstag, zwm 
iEsTHETiscHEN Thee schonsteus eingeladen.'' 

Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is 
the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the 
invitation to a wash of quite fluid ^Esthetic Tea ! How 
Teufelsdrockh, now at actual handgrips with Destiny herself, 
may have comported himself among these Musical and 
Literary Dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited 
to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps 
in expressive silence, and abstinence : otherwise if the lion, in 
such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, 
but only on the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Grafinn 
dates from the Zdhdarm House, she can be no other than 
the Countess and mistress of the same ; whose intellectual 
tendencies, and good-will to Teufelsdrockh, whether on the 
footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own footing, are hereby 
manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed, continued, for 
a time, to connect our Autobiographer, though perhaps feebly 
enough, with this noble House, we have elsewhere express 
evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in 
vain ; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses 
of the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to 
have been always excluded. ' The Zahdarms,' says he, * lived 
in the soft, sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy ; whereto 
Literature and Art, attracted and attached from without, 
were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was to the 
Gnddigen Frau (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement 
was due : assiduously she gathered, dextrously she fitted-on, 
what fringing was to be had ; lace or cobweb, as the place 
yielded.' Was Teufelsdrockh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb ; 
or promising to be such .? * With his Excellenz (the Count),* 



102 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

continues he, * I have more than once had the honour to 
converse ; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the 
world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no 
unfavourable light ; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of 
Journalism (die aiiszurottende Journalistik\ little to desiderate 
therein. On some points, as his Excellenz was not uncholeric, 
I found it more pleasant to keep silence. Besides, his occupa- 
tion being that of Owning Land, there might be faculties 
enough, which, as superfluous for such use, were little 
developed in him.' 

That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was nowise 
so faultless, and many things besides ' the Outrooting of 
Journalism' might have seemed improvements, we can readily 
conjecture. With nothing but a barren Auscultatorship from 
without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes from 
within, his position was no easy one. * The Universe,' he 
says, 'was as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, 
yet must rede, or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable 
grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness, was Life, to 
my too-unfurnished Thought, unfolding itself. A strange 
contradiction lay in me ; and I as yet knew not the solution 
of it ; knew not that spiritual music can spring only from 
discords set in harmony ; l that but for Evil there were no 
Good, as victory is only possible by battle.'^ 

' I have heard affirmed (surely in jest),' observes he else- 
where, * by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real 
increase of human happiness, could all young men from the 
age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered other- 
wise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies 
and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age 
of twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as considered 
in the light of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I 
nowise coincide. Nevertheless it is plausibly lu-ged that, as 
young ladies (Mddchen) are, to mankind, precisely the most 
delightful in those years ; so young gentlemen (Bubchen) do 
then attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks 



CHAP. IV.] GETTING UNDER WAY 103 

(Gecken) are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a 
vulturous hunger for self-indulgence ; so obstinate, obstreper- 
ous, vain-glorious ; in all senses, so fro ward and so forward. 
No mortal's endeavour or attainment will, in the smallest, 
content the as yet unendeavouring, unattaining young 
gentleman ; but he could make it all infinitely better, were 
it worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most manageable 
matter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three : multiply 
yoiu" second and third term together, divide the product by 
the first, and your quotient will be the answer, — which you 
are but an ass if you cannot come at. The booby has not 
yet found-out, by any trial, that, do what one will, there is 
ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net 
integer quotient so much as to be thought of.' 

In which passage does not there lie an implied confession 
that Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward obstructions, 
had an inward, still greater, to contend with ; namely, a 
certain temporary, youthful, yet still afflictive derangement of 
head ? Alas, on the former side alone, his case was hard 
enough. * It continues ever true,' says he, ' that Satiun, or 
Chronos, or what we call Time, devours all his Children : 
only by incessant Running, by incessant Working, may you 
(for some threescore-and-ten years) escape him ; and you too 
he devours at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of 
Sovereigns, bid Time stand still ; even in thought, shake 
themselves free of Time ? Our whole terrestrial being is based 
on Time, and built of Time ; it is wholly a Movement, a 
Time-impulse ; Time is the author of it, the material of it. 
Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to work, — in 
the right direction. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in 
continual movement, whether we will or not ; in a continual 
Waste, requiring a continual Repair.? Utmost satisfaction 
of our whole outward and inward Wants were but satisfaction 
for a space of Time ; thus, whatso we have ddne, is done, and 
for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. O 
Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and 



104 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that only 
in lucid moments can so much as glimpses of oiu* upper Azure 
Home be revealed to us ! Me, however, as a Son of Time, 
unhappier than some others, was Time threatening to eat 
quite prematurely ; for, strive as I might, there was no good 
Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet.' 
That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this 
lower world, that Teufelsdrockh's whole duty and necessity 
was, like other men's, *to work, — in the right direction,' and 
that no work was to be had ; whereby he became wretched 
enough. As was natural : with haggard Scarcity threatening 
him in the distance ; and so vehement a soul languishing in 
restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword 
by rust, 

To eat into itself, for lack 

Of something else to hew and hack ! 

But on the whole, that same ' excellent Passivity,' as it has 
all along done, is here again vigorously flourishing ; in which 
circumstance may we not trace the beginnings of much that 
now characterises our Professor; and perhaps, in faint rudi- 
ments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophy itself.? Already 
the attitude he has assumed towards the World is too defensive; 
not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. 
' So far hitherto,' he says, ' as I had mingled with mankind, I 
was notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of manner, 
which, as my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill ex- 
press the keen ardour of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded 
men with an excess both of love and of fear. The mystery of 
a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for 
the Godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by 
half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness {Hdrte), my 
Indifferentism towards men ; and the seemingly ironic tone I 
had adopted, as my favom-ite dialect in conversation. Alas, 
the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein 
I had striven to envelope myself ; that so my own poor Person 



CHAP. IV.] GETTING UNDER WAY 105 

might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer 
exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, 
the language of the Devil ; for which reason I have long since 
as good as renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in 
those days, provoke into some degree of hostility thereby ! An 
ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambuscading ways, more 
especially an ironic young man, from whom it is least expected, 
may be viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen 
persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest 
indiiference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignifi- 
cancy and worm, start ceiling-high (balJcenhoch), and thence 
fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, 
not without indignation, when he proved electric and a 
torpedo ! ' 

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make 
way for himself in Life ; where the first problem, as Teufels- 
drockh too admits, is * to unite yourself with some one and 
with somewhat (sich cmzuschliessen) ' ? Division, not imion, is 
written on most part of his procedure. Let us add too that, 
in no great length of time, the only important connexion 
he had ever succeeded in forming, his connexion with the 
Zahdarm Family, seems to have been paralysed, for all 
practical uses, by the death of the ' not uncholeric' old Count. 
This fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain 
Discourse on Epitaphs, huddled into the present Bag, among 
so much else; of which Essay the learning and curious penetra- 
tion are more to be approved of than the spirit. His grand 
principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, 
should be Historical rather than Lyrical. 'By request of 
that worthy Nobleman's survivors,' says he, ' I undertook to 
compose his Epitaph ; and not immindful of my own rules, 
produced the following ; which however, for an alleged defect 
of Latinity, a defect never yet fully visible to myself, still 
remains unengraven ; ' — wherein, we may predict, there is 
more than the Latinity that will surprise an English 
reader : 



106 SARTOR RESARTUS [book li. 

HIC JACET 

PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, 

ZAEHDARMI COMES, 

EX IMPERII CONCILIO, 

VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTUBIS NIGRI 

EQUES. 

QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, 

QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES 

PLUMBO CONFECIT : 

VARII CIBI 

CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA, 

PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS aUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE, 

HACD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS, 

IN STERCUS 

PALAM CONVERTTT. 

NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM 
OPERA SEdUUNTUR. 

SI MONUMENTUM QU.ERIS, 
FIMETUM ADSPICE. 

PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [sub dato] ; POSTREMUM [suh dato]. 



CHAPTER V 

ROMANCE 

Teuf elsdrSckh gives up his Profession. The heavenly mystery of Love. 
Teufelsdrockh's feeling of worship towards women. First and only love. 
Blumine. Happy hearts and free tongues. The infinite nature of Fantasy. 
Love'd joyful progress ; sudden dissolution ; and final catastrophe. 

'For long years,' writes Teufelsdrockh, 'had the poor 
Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, 
baking bricks without stubble, before ever the question once 
struck him with entire force : For what ? — Beym Hwvmel ! 



CHAP, v.] ROMANCE 107 

For Food and Warmth ! And are Food and Warmth nowhere 
else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable? — Come of it 
what might, I resolved to try.' 

Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, 
though perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdrockh is 
now a man without Profession. Quitting the common Fleet 
of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his leeward, 
laggard condition was painful enough, he desperately steers 
off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his 
own. Unhappy Teufelsdrockh ! Though neither Fleet, nor 
Traffic, nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not a Fleets 
sailing in prescribed track, for fixed objects ; above all, in 
combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all manner of 
loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid the other ? 
How wilt thou sail in unknown seas ; and for thyself find that 
shorter North-west Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a 
Nowhere ? — A solitary rover, on such a voyage, with such 
nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay, as we forth- 
with discover, a certain Calypso-Island detains him at the very 
outset ; and as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. 

* If in youth,' writes he once, ' the Universe is majestically 
unveiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing itself on Earth, 
nowhere to the Young Man does this Heaven on Earth so 
immediately reveal itself as in the Young Maiden. Strangely 
enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so appointed. 
On the whole, as I have often said, a Person (PersonlichJceit) 
is ever holy to us ; a certain orthodox Anthropomorphism 
connects my Me with all TTiees in bonds of Love : but it is 
in this approximation of the Like and Unlike, that such 
heavenly attraction, as between Negative and Positive, first 
burns-out into a flame. Is the pitifuUest mortal Person, 
think you, indifferent to us ? Is it not rather our heartfelt 
wish to be made one with him ; to unite him to us, by 
gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or failing all these, 
unite ourselves to him ? But how much more, in this case of 
the Like-Unlike ! Here is conceded us the higher mystic possi- 



108 SARTOR RESARTUS [book II. 

bility of such a union, the highest in our Earth ; thus, in the 
conducting medium of Fantasy, flames-forth that^r^-develop- 
ment of the universal Spiritual Electricity, which, as unfolded 
between man and woman, we first emphatically denominate 
Love. 

'In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there 
already blooms a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by 
some fairest Eve ; nor, in the stately vistas, and flowerage 
and foliage of that Garden, is a Tree of Knowledge, beautiful 
and awful in the midst thereof, wanting. Perhaps too the 
whole is but the lovelier, if Cherubim and a Flaming Sword 
divide it from all footsteps of men ; and grant him, the 
imaginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. Happy 
season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable 
celestial barrier ; „-and the sacred air-cities of Hope have not 
shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of Reality ;, and man, by 
his nature, is yet infinite and free ! 

' As for our young Forlorn,' continues Teufelsdrockh, evi- 
dently meaning himself, ' in his secluded way of life, and with 
his glowing Fantasy, the more fiery that it burnt under cover, 
as in a reverberating furnace, his feeling towards the Queens 
of this Earth was, and indeed is, altogether unspeakable. A 
visible Divinity dwelt in them ; to our young Friend all 
women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them 
flitting past, in their many-coloured angel-plumage ; or 
hovering mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of Esthetic 
Tea : all of air they were, all Soul and Form ; so lovely, like 
mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the invisible 
Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very Heaven. 
That he, our poor Friend, should ever win for himself one of 
these Gracefuls (Holden) — Ach Gott ! how could he hope it ; 
should he not have died under it-f* There was a certain 
delirious vertigo in the thought. 

' Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and 
Angels such as the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless 
not unvisited by hosts of true Sky-bom, who visibly and 



CHAP, v.] ROMANCE 109 

audibly hovered round him wheresoever he went ; and they 
had that religious worship in his thought, though as yet it 
was by their mere earthly and trivial name that he named 
them. But now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual 
Air-maiden, incorporated into tangibility and reality, should 
cast any electric glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, "Thou 
too mayst love and be loved " ; and so kindle him, — ^good 
Heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming 
fire were probably kindled ! ' 

Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst-forth, 
with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of 
Herr Diogenes ; as indeed how could it fail ? A nature, 
which, in his own figurative style, we might say, had now not 
a little carbonised tinder, of Irritability ; with so much nitre 
of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humour enough ; the whole 
lying in such hot neighbourhood, close by 'a reverberating 
furnace of Fantasy ' : have we not here the components of 
driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, 
to blaze-up.? Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks 
anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so 
many hovered round, would one day, leaving ' the outskirts of 
JEsthetic Tea,"* flit nigher ; and, by electric Promethean glance, 
kindle no despicable firework. Happy, if it indeed proved a 
Firework, and flamed-off rocket-wise, in successive beautiful 
bursts of splendour, each growing natm-ally from the other, 
through the several stages of a happy Youthful Love ; till 
the whole were safely burnt-out ; and the young soul relieved 
with little damage ! Happy, if it did not rather prove a 
Conflagration and mad Explosion ; painfully lacerating the 
heart itself; nay perhaps bursting the heart in pieces (which 
were Death) ; or at best, bursting the thin walls of your 
'reverberating famace,' so that it rage thenceforth all 
unchecked among the contiguous combustibles (which were 
Madness) : till of the so fair and manifold internal world of 
our Diogenes, there remained Nothing, or only the ' crater of 
an extinct volcano ' ! 



110 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK li. 

From multifarious Documents in this Bag Capricornus, and 
in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, it becomes mani- 
fest that our philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he now 
looks, was heartily and even frantically in Love : here there- 
fore may our old doubts whether his heart were of stone or of 
flesh give way. He loved once ; not wisely but too well. 
And once only : *for as your Congreve needs a new case or 
wrappage for every new rocket, so each human heart can 
properly exhibit but one Love, if even one ; ^ the * First Love 
which is infinite ' can be followed by no second like unto it., 
In more recent years, accordingly, the Editor of these Sheets 
was led to regard Teufelsdrockh as a man not only who would 
never wed, but who would never even flirt ; whom the grand- 
climacteric itself, and St Martin's Summer of incipient Dotage, 
would crown with no new myrtle-garland. To the Professor, 
women are henceforth Pieces of Art ; of Celestial Art, indeed ; 
which celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has 
lost thought of purchasing. 

Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how 
Teufelsdrockh, in this for him imexampled predicament, 
demeans himself ; with what specialties of successive configura- 
tion, splendour and colour, his Firework blazes-ofi: Small, as 
usual, is the satisfaction that such can meet with here. From 
amid these confused masses of Eulogy and Elegy, with their 
mad Petrarchan and Werterean ware lying madly scattered 
among all sorts of quite extraneous matter, not so much as the 
fair one's name can be deciphered. For, without doubt, the title 
Blumine, whereby she is here designated, and which means 
simply Goddess of Flowers, must be fictitious. Was her real 
name Flora, then ? But what was her surname, or had she 
none ? Of what station in Life was she ; of what parentage, 
fortune, aspect ? Specially, by what Preestablished Harmony 
of occurrences did the Lover and the Loved meet one another 
in so wide a world ; how did they behave in such a meeting ? 
To all which questions, not unessential in a Biographic work, 
mere Conjecture must for most part retiurn answer. * It was 



CHAP, v.] ROMANCE 111 

appointed,' says our Philosopher, * that the high celestial orbit 
of Blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of our 
Forlorn ; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should fancy 
the upper Sphere of Light was come down into this nether 
sphere of Shadows ; and finding himself mistaken, make noise 
enough.' 

We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beauti- 
ful, and some one's Cousin ; highborn, and of high spirit ; 
but unhappily dependent and insolvent ; living, perhaps, on 
the not too gracious bounty of moneyed relatives. But how 
came * the Wanderer ' into her circle ? Was it by the humid 
vehicle of Esthetic Tea, or by the arid one of mere Business ? 
Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood ; or of the Gnadige 
Frau, who, as an ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to 
promote flirtation, especially for youmg cynical Nondescripts ? 
To all appearance, it was chiefly by Accident, and the grace 
of Nature. 

* Thou fair Waldschloss,' writes our Autobiographer, * what 
stranger ever saw thee, were it even an absolved Auscultator, 
officially bearing in his pocket the last Relatio ex Actis he 
would ever write, but must have paused to wonder ! Noble 
Mansion ! There stoodest thou, in deep Mountain Amphi- 
theatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude ; stately, 
massive, all of granite ; |glittering in the western sunbeams, 
like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal^ 
Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy 
guardian Hills; of the greenest was their sward, embossed 
with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by some spread- 
ing solitary Tree and its shadow. To the unconscious Way- 
farer thou wert also as an Ammon's Temple, in the Libyan 
Waste ; where, for joy and woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay 
written. Well might he pause and gaze ; in that glance of 
his were prophecy and nameless forebodings.' 

But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscul- 
tator has handed-in his Relatio ex Actis ; been invited to a 
glass of Rhine- wine; and so, instead of returning dispirited 



112 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK li. 

and athirst to his dusty Town-home, is ushered into the 
Gardenhouse, where sit the choicest party of dames and 
cavahers : if not engaged in ^Esthetic Tea, yet in trustful 
evening conversation, and perhaps Musical Coffee,' for we hear 
of * harps and pure voices making the stillness live.'' Scarcely, 
it would seem, is the Gardenhouse inferior in respectability to 
the noble mansion itself. * Embowered amid rich foliage, 
rose-clusters, and the hues and odours of thousand flowers, 
here sat that brave company ; in front, from the wide-opened 
doors, fair outlook over blossom and bush, over grove and 
velvet green, stretching, undulating onwards to the remote 
Mountain peaks : so bright, so mild, and everywhere the 
melody of birds and happy creatures : ^it was all as if man 
had stolen a shelter from the Sun in the bosom-vesture of 
Summer herself. . How came it that the Wanderer advanced 
thither with such forecasting heart (ahndtmgsvoll), by the side 
of his gay host ? Did he feel that to these soft influences his 
hard bosom ought to be shut ; that here, once more. Fate had 
it in view to try him ; to mock him, and see whether there 
were Humour in him ? 

' Next moment he finds himself presented to the party ; 
and especially by name to — Blumine ! Peculiar among all 
dames and damosels glanced Blumine, there in her modesty, 
like a star among earthly lights. Noblest maiden ! whom he 
bent to, in body and in soul ; yet scarcely dared look at, for 
the presence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrass- 
ment. 

' Blumine's was a name well known to him ; far and wide 
was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her 
caprices : from all which vague colourings of Rumour, from 
the censures no less than from the praises, had our friend 
painted for himself a certain imperious Queen of Hearts, and 
blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting than 
your mere white Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid 
veins circulates too little naphtha-fire. Herself also he had 
seen in public places ; that light yet so stately form ; those 



CHAP, v.] ROMANCE 113 

dark tresses, shading a face where smiles and sunlight played 
over earnest deeps : but all this he had seen only as a magic 
vision, for him inaccessible, almost without reality. Her 
sphere was too far from his ; how should she ever think of 
him ; O Heaven ! how should they so much as once meet 
together.? And now that Rose -goddess sits in the same 
circle with him ; the light of her eyes has smiled on him ; 
if he speak, she will hear it ! ; Nay, who knows, since the 
heavenly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but Blumine herself 
might have aforetime noted the so unnotable ; perhaps, from 
his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder, 
gathered favour for him .? Was the attraction, the agitation 
mutual, then ; pole and pole trembling towards contact, when 
once brought into neighbourhood ? Say rather, heart swelling 
in presence of the Queen of Hearts ; like the Sea swelling 
when once near its Moon ! With the Wanderer it was even 
so -J: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at the touch of 
a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its deepest 
recesses ;} and all that was painful and that was blissful there, 
dim images, vague feelings of a whole Past and a whole 
Future, are heaving in unquiet eddies within him. 

' Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend 
shrunk forcibly together; and shrouded-up his tremors and 
flutterings, of what sort soever, in a safe cover of Silence, and 
perhaps of seeming Stolidity. How was it, then, that here, 
when trembling to the core of his heart, he did not sink into 
swoons, but rose into strength, into fearlessness and clearness .? 
It was his guiding Genius {Damon) that inspired him ; he 
must go forth and meet his Destiny. Show thyself now, 
whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even 
when your anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul ^first 
feels herself able to transcend it \\ that she rises above it, in 
fiery victory ; and borne on new-found wings of victory, moves 
so calmly, even because so rapidly, so irresistibly. Always 
must the Wanderer remember, with a certain satisfaction and 
surprise, how in this case he sat not silent, but struck adroitly 

H 



114 • SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

into the stream of conversation ; which thenceforth, to speak 
with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say that he 
continued to lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain inspira- 
tion was imparted him, such inspiration as is still possible in 
our late era. The self-secluded unfolds himself in noble 
thoughts, in free, glowing words ; ^his soul is as one sea of 
light, the peculiar home of Truth and Intellect ; , wherein also 
Fantasy bodies-forth form after form, radiant with all 
prismatic hues.' 

It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked 
one ' Philistine ' ; who even now, to the general weariness, was 
dominantly pouring-forth Philistinism (Philistriosifdten) ; little 
witting what hero was here entering to demolish him ! We 
omit the series of Socratic, or rather Diogenic utterances, not 
unhappy in their way, whereby the monster, * persuaded into 
silence,' seems soon after to have withdrawn for the night. 
* Of which dialectic marauder,' writes our hero, * the discomfi- 
ture was visibly felt as a benefit by most : but what were all 
applauses to the glad smile, threatening every moment to 
become a laugh, wherewith Blumine herself repaid the victor ? 
He ventured to address her, she answered with attention : nay 
what if there were a slight tremor in that silver voice ; what 
if the red glow of evening were hiding a transient blush ! 

' The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought 
called forth another : , it was one of those rare seasons, when 
the soul expands with full freedom, and man feels himself 
brought near to man.', Gaily in light, graceful abandonment, 
the friendly talk played round that circle ; for the burden was 
rolled from every heart ; the barriers of Ceremony, which are 
indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapour ; 
and the poor claims of Me and Thee^ no longer parted by 
rigid fences, now flowed softly into one another; (and Life lay 
all harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, 
the sovereign and owner of which were Love only. ^ Such music 
springs from kind hearts, in a kind environment of place and 
time. And yet as the light grew more aerial on the mountain- 



CHAP, v.] ROMANCE 115 

tops, and the shadows fell longer over the valley, some faint 
tone of sadness may have breathed through the heart ; and, in 
whispers more or less audible, reminded every one that as this 
bright day was drawing towards its close, so likewise must the 
Day of Man's Existence decline into dust and darkness ;) and 
with all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink 
in the still Eternity. 

' To our Friend the horn's seemed moments ; holy was he 
and happy : the words from those sweetest lips came over him 
like dew on thirsty grass ; -all better feelings in his soul seemed 
to whisper. It is good for us to be here. ; At parting, the 
Blumine's hand was in his : in the balmy twilight, with the 
kind stars above them, he spoke something of meeting again, 
which was not contradicted ; he pressed gently those small soft 
fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily 
withdrawn.' 

Poor Teufelsdrockh ! it is clear to demonstration thou art 
smit : the Queen of Hearts would see a ' man of genius ' also 
sigh for her ; and there, by art-magic, in that preternatural 
hour, has she bound and spell-bound thee. ' Love is not alto- 
gether a Delirium,' says he elsewhere ; * yet has it many points 
in common therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the 
Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real ; which discerning 
again may be either true or false, either seraphic or demoniac. 
Inspiration or Insanity. But in the former case too, as in 
common Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds itself to sight ; 
on the so petty domain of the Actual plants its Archimedes- 
lever, whereby to move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy 
I might call the true Heaven-gate and Hell-gate of man : his 
sensuous life is but the small temporary stage (Zeiibuhne), 
whereon thick-streaming influences from both these far yet near 
regions meet visibly, and act tragedy and melodrama. Sense 
can support herself handsomely, in most countries, for some 
eighteen-pence a day; but for Fantasy planets and solar- 
systems will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the 
world, yet drinking no better red wine than he had before.' 



116 SARTOR RESARTUS [book li. 

Alas ! witness also your Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper 
Heaven, and verging towards Insanity, for prize of a 'high- 
souled Brunette,' as if the earth held but one and not several 
of these ! 

He says that, in Town, they met again : ' day after day, like 
his heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone on him. Ah ! a 
little while ago, and he was yet in all darkness : him what 
Graceful {Holde) would ever love? Disbelieving all things, 
the poor youth had never learned to believe in himself. With- 
drawn, in proud timidity, within his own fastnesses ; solitary 
from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he saw himself, 
with a sad indignation, constrained to renounce the fairest 
hopes of existence. And now, O now ! " She looks on thee," 
cried he : " she the fairest, noblest ; do not her dark eyes tell 
thee, thou art not despised ? The Heaven's-Messenger ! All 
Heaven's blessings be hers ! " Thus did soft melodies flow 
through his heart ; tones of an infinite gratitude ;, sweetest 
intimations that he also was a man, that for him also unutter- 
able joys had been provided. 

* In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, laugh- 
ter, tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic speech of 
Music : such was the element they now lived in ; in such a 
many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by this fairest of Orient 
Light-bringers must our Friend be blandished, and the new 
Apocalypse of Nature unrolled to him. Fairest Blumine ! 
And, even as a Star, all Fire and humid Softness, a very Light- 
ray incarnate ! Was there so much as a fault, a " caprice," he 
could have dispensed with ? Was she not to him in very deed 
a Morning-Star;,' did not her presence bring with it airs from 
Heaven ? As from MoWaco. Harps in the breath of dawn, as 
from the Memnon's Statue struck by the rosy finger of Aurora, 
unearthly music was around him, and lapped him into imtried 
balmy Rest. Pale Doubt fled away to the distance ; Life 
bloomed-up with happiness and hope. The past, then, was 
all a haggard dream ; he had been in the Garden of Eden, 
then, and could not discern it ! But lo now ! the black walls 



CHAP, v.] ROMANCE 117 

of his prison melt away ; the captive is alive, is free. If he 
loved his Disenchantress ? Ach Gott ! His whole heart and 
soul and life were hers, but never had he named it Love : 
(existence was all a Feeling, not yet shaped into a Thought.' 

Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it must 
be shaped ; for neither Disenchanter nor Disenchantress, mere 
' Children of Time,' can abide by Feeling alone. The Pro- 
fessor knows not, to this day, * how in her soft, fervid bosom 
the Lovely found determination, even on best of Necessity, to 
cut asunder these so blissful bonds.' He even appears sur- 
prised at the ' Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been, 
'in whose meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of 
young hearts was, from the first, faintly approved of.' We, 
even at such distance, can explain it without necromancy. 
Let the Philosopher answer this one question. What figure, 
at that period, was a Mrs Teufelsdrockh likely to make in 
polished society ? Could she have driven so much as a brass- 
bound Gig, or even a simple iron-spring one ? Thou foolish 
' absolved Auscultator,' before whom lies no prospect of capital, 
will any yet known ' religion of young hearts' keep the human 
kitchen warm ? Pshaw ! thy divine Blumine, when she 
' resigned herself to wed some richer,' shows more philosophy, 
though but 'a woman of genius,' than thou, a pretended 
man. 

Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love-mania, 
and with what royal splendour it waxes, and rises. Let no 
one ask us to unfold the glories of its dominant state ; much 
less the horrors of its almost instantaneous dissolution. How 
from such inorganic masses, henceforth madder than ever, as 
lie in these Bags, can even fragments of a living delineation 
be organised ? Besides, of what profit were it ? We view, 
with a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier start from the 
groimd, and shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it 
dwindle to a luminous star : but what is there to look longer 
on, when once, by natural elasticity, or accident of fire, it has 
exploded? A hapless air-navigator, plunging, amid torn 



118 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

parachutes, sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast enough into 
the jaws of the Devil ! Suffice it to know that Teufelsdrockh 
rose into the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a natural 
parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular 
one. For the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been 
unhappy enough to do the like, paint it out for himself: 
considering only that if he, for his perhaps comparatively 
insignificant mistress, underwent such agonies and frenzies, 
what must Teufelsdrockh's have been, with a fire-heart, and 
for a nonpareil Blumiae ! We glance merely at the final 
scene : 

* One morning, he found his Morning-star all dimmed and 
dusky-red ; the fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed to 
have been weeping. Alas, no longer a Morning-star, but a 
troublous skyey Portent, announcing that the Doomsday had 
dawned ! She said, in a tremulous voice. They were to meet 
no more.' The thunderstruck Air-sailor is not wanting to 
himself in this dread hoiu" : but what avails it ? We omit 
the passionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since all 
was vain, and not even an explanation was conceded him ; and 
hasten to the catastrophe. * " Farewell, then, Madam ! " said 
he, not without sternness, for his stung pride helped him. 
She put her hand in his, she looked in his face, tears started 
to her eyes ; in wild audacity he clasped her to his bosom ; 
their lips were joined, their two souls, like two dew-drops, 
rushed into one, — ^for the first time, and for the last ! ' Thus 
was Teufelsdrockh made immortal by a kiss. And then? 
AVhy, then — ' thick curtains of Night rushed over his soul, as 
rose the immeasurable Crash of Doom ; and through the ruins 
as of a shivered Universe was he falling, falling, towards the 
Abyss.' 



CHAP. VI.] SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 119 



CHAPTER VI. 
SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 

Teufelsdrockh's demeanour thereupon. Turns pUgrim. A last wistful 
look on native Entepf uhl : Sunset amongst primitive Mountains. Basilisk- 
glance of the Barouche-and-four. Thoughts on View-hunting. Wander- 
ings and Sorrowings. 

We have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, matters 
must often be expected to take a course of their own ; that 
in so multiplex, intricate a natm-e, there might be channels, 
both for admitting and emitting, such as the Psychologist had 
seldom noted ; in short, that on no grand occasion and con- 
vulsion, neither in the joy-storm nor in the woe-storm, could 
you predict his demeanour. 

To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now 
clear that the so passionate Teufelsdrockh, precipitated 
through *a shivered Universe' in this extraordinary way has 
only one of three things which he can next do : Establish him- 
self in Bedlam ; begin vn-iting Satanic Poetry ; or blow-out 
his brains. In the progress towards any of which consumma- 
tions, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough ; 
breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings 
of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of 
furniture, if not arson itself.'' 

Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. He quietly 
lifts his Pilgerstdb (Pilgrim-staff), 'old business being soon 
wound-up ' ; and begins a perambulation and circumambulation 
of the terraqueous Globe ! Curious it is, indeed, how with 
such vivacity of conception, such intensity of feeling, above 
all, with these unconscionable habits of Exaggeration in 
speech, he combines that wonderful stillness of his, that 
stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his sudden bereave- 
ment, in this matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as 
a real Doomsday and Dissolution of Nature, in which light 



120 SARTOR RESARTUS [book II. 

doubtless it partly appeared to himself, his own nature is 
nowise dissolved thereby ; but rather is compressed closer. 
For once, as we might say, a Blumine by magic appliances has 
unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things rush-out 
tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from their glass 
phial : but no sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, 
than the strange casket of a heart springs- to again ; and 
perhaps there is now no key extant that will open it ; for a 
Teufelsdrockh, as we remarked, will not love a second time. 
Singular Diogenes ! No sooner has that heart-rending occm*- 
rence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard it as a thing 
natiu*al, of which there is nothing more to be said. ' One 
highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel, had 
recalled him as out of Death-shadows into celestial Life : but 
a gleam of Tophet passed over the face of his Angel ; he was 
rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of Demons. 
It was a Calenture,' adds he, * whereby the Youth saw green 
Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean- waters : a lying vision, 
yet not wholly a lie, for he saw it.' But what things soever 
passed in him, when he ceased to see it ; what ragings and 
despairings soever Teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he 
has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of 
Silence. We know it well ; the first mad paroxysm past, our 
brave Gneschen collected his dismembered philosophies, and 
buttoned himself together ; he was meek, silent, or spoke of 
the weather and the Journals : only by a transient knitting 
of those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of those eyes, 
glancing one knew not whether with tear-dew or with fierce 
fire, — ^might you have guessed what a Gehenna was within ; 
that a whole Satanic School were spouting, though in- 
audibly, there. To consume your own choler, as some 
chimneys consume their own smoke ; to keep a whole Satanic 
School spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a negative yet 
no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these times. 

Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the 
strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent 



CHAP.VL] SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 121 

Insanity ; whereof indeed the actual condition of these 
Documents in Capricornus and Aquarius is no bad emblem. 
His so unlimited Wanderings, toilsome enough, are without 
assigned or perhaps assignable aim ; internal Unrest seems his 
sole guidance ; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the 
Prophet had fallen on him, and he were ' made like unto a 
wheel.' Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these Paper-bags 
aggTavates our obscurity. Quite without note of preparation, 
for example, we come upon the following slip : * A peculiar 
feeling it is that will rise in the Traveller, when turning some 
hUl-range in his desert road, he descries lying far below, 
embosomed among its groves and green natiu-al bulwarks, and 
all diminished to a toybox, the fair Town, where so many 
souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their 
multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is then truly a 
starward-pointing finger ; the canopy of blue smoke seems 
like a sort of Life-breath : for always, of its own unity, the 
soul gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love ;Nthus 
does the little Dwellingplace of men, in itself a congeries of 
houses and huts, become for us an individual, almost a person. 
But what thousand other thoughts unite thereto, if the place 
has to ourselves been the arena of joyous or mom-nful 
experiences ; if perhaps the cradle we were rocked in still 
stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, if om* Buried 
ones there slumber ! ' Does Teufelsdrockh, as the wounded 
eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military 
deserters, and all hunted outcast creatiu-es, turn as if by 
instinct in the direction of their birthland, — ^fly first, in this 
extremity, towards his native Entepfuhl ; but reflecting that 
there no help awaits him, take only one wistful look from the 
distance, and then wend elsewhither ? 

Little happier seems to be his next flight : into the wilds 
of Nature ; as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. 
So at least we incline to interpret the following Notice, 
separated from the former by some considerable space, 
wherein, however, is nothing noteworthy : 



122 SARTOR RESARTUS [book II. 

' Mountains were not new to him ; but rarely are Moun- 
tains seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. The 
rocks are of that sort called Primitive by the mineralogists, 
which always arrange themselves in masses of a rugged, 
gigantic character ; which ruggedness, however, is here 
tempered by a singular airiness of form, and softness of 
environment : in a climate favourable to vegetation, the gray 
cliif, itself covered with lichens, shoots-up through a garment 
of foliage or verdure ; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, 
cluster round the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude. 
Beauty alternates with Grandeur : you ride through stony 
hollows, along strait passes, traversed by torrents, overhung 
by high walls of rock ; now winding amid broken shaggy 
chasms, and huge fragments ; now suddenly emerging into 
some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a 
Lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems 
as if Peace had established herself in the bosom of Strength. ! 

' To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the 
Son of Time not pretend : still less if some Spectre haunt him 
from the Past ; and the Future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, 
spectre-bearing. Reasonably might the Wanderer exclaim to 
himself : Are not the gates of this world's Happiness inexor- 
ably shut against thee ; hast thou a hope that is not mad ? 
Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original 
Greek if that suit thee better : " Whoso can look on Death 
will start at no shadows." 

* From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention called 
outwards ; for now the Valley closes-in abruptly, intersected 
by a huge mountain mass, the stony water-worn ascent of 
which is not to be accomplished on horseback. Arrived aloft, 
he finds himself again lifted into the evening sunset light; 
and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some moments 
there. An upland irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in 
complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their 
descent towards every quarter of the sky. The mountain- 
ranges are beneath your feet, and folded together : only the 



CHAP.vi.J SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 123 

loftier summits look down here and there as on a second 
plain ; lakes also lie clear and earnest in their solitude. No 
trace of man now visible ; unless indeed it were he who 
fashioned that little visible link of Highway, here, as would 
seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite Province with Province. 
But sun- wards, lo you ! how it towers sheer up, a world of 
Mountains, the diadem and centre of the mountain region ! 
A hundred and a himdred savage peaks, in the last light of 
Day ; all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of 
the wilderness ; there in their silence, in their solitude, even 
as on the night when Noah's Deluge first dried ! Beautiful, 
nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He 
gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost with 
longing desire ; never till this hour had he known Nature, 
that she was One, that she was his Mother and divine. ^ And 
as the ruddy glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and 
the Sun had now departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immen- 
sity, of Death and of Life, stole through his soul ; and he felt 
as if Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, 
as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splendoiu", 
and his own spirit were therewith holding communion. 

* The spell was broken by a sound of carriage- wheels. 
Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon into the 
hidden Southward, came a gay Barouche-and-four : it was 
open ; servants and postillions wore wedding-favours : that 
happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their marriage 
evening ! Few moments brought them near : Du Himmel ! 

It was Herr Towgood and Blumine ! With slight 

unrecognising salutation they passed me ; plunged down amid 
the neighbouring thickets, onwards, to Heaven, and to 
England ; and I, in my friend Richter's words, / remained 
alone, behind them, with the Night.'' 

Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be 
the place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago from the 
great Clothes- Volume, where it stands with quite other intent : 
' Some time before Small-pox was extirpated,' says the 



124 SARTOR RESARTUS [book II. 

Professor, there came a new malady of the spiritual sort on 
Europe : I mean the epidemic, now endemical, of View- 
hunting. Poets of old date, being privileged with Senses, had 
also enjoyed external Nature ; but chiefly as we enjoy the 
crystal cup which holds good or bad liquor for us ; that is 
to say, in silence, or with slight incidental commentary : 
never, as I compute, till after the Sorrows of Werter, was 
there man found who woxild say : Come let us make a 
Description ! Having drunk the liquor, come let us eat the 
glass ! Of which endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to 
seek.' Too true ! 

We reckon it more important to remark that the Pro- 
fessor's Wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical en- 
velopment admits us to clear insight, here first take their 
permanent character, fatuous or not. That Basilisk-glance of 
the Barouche-and-four seems to have withered-up what little 
remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him : Life has 
become wholly a dark labyrinth ; wherein, through long years, 
our Friend, flying from spectres, has to stumble about at 
random, and naturally with more haste than progress. 

Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from 
afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his ; the 
simplest record of which, were clear record possible, would 
fill volumes. Hopeless is the obscurity, unspeakable the 
confusion. He glides from country to country, from condition 
to condition ; vanishing and re-appearing, no man can calcu- 
late how or where. Through all quarters of the world he 
wanders, and apparently through all circles of society. If in 
any scene, perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he settles 
for a time, and forms connexions, be sure he will snap them 
abruptly asunder. Let him sink out of sight as Private 
Scholar (Privatisirender), living by the grace of God in some 
European capital, you may next find him as Hadjee in the 
neighbourhood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable Phantasma- 
goria, capricious, quick-changing ; as if our Traveller, instead 
of limbs and highways, had transported himself by some 



CHAP. VI.] SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 125 

wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The whole, too, imparted 
emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that collection 
of Street- Advertisements) ; with only some touch of direct 
historical notice sparingly interspersed : little light-islets in 
the world of haze ! So that, from this point, the Professor 
is more of an enigma than ever. In figurative language, we 
might say he becomes, not indeed a spirit, yet spiritualised, 
vaporised. Fact unparalleled in Biography : The river of his 
History, which we have traced from its tiniest fountains, and 
hoped to see flow onward, with increasing current, into the 
ocean, here dashes itself over that terrific Lover's Leap ; and, 
as a mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous clouds 
of spray ! Low down it indeed collects again into pools and 
plashes ; yet only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at 
all, into a general stream. To cast a glance into certain of 
those pools and plashes, and trace whither they run, must, for 
a chapter or two, form the limit of our endeavour. 

For which end doubtless those direct historical Notices, 
where they can be met with, are the best. Nevertheless, of 
this sort too there occurs much, which, with our present light, 
it were questionable to emit. Teufelsdrockh, vibrating every- 
where between the highest and the lowest levels, comes into 
contact with public History itself. For example, those 
conversations and relations with illustrious Persons, as 
Sultan Mahmoud, the Emperor Napoleon, and others, are 
they not as yet rather of a diplomatic character than of a 
biographic? The Editor, appreciating the sacredness of 
crowned heads, nay perhaps suspecting the possible trickeries 
of a Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew this province for the 
present; a new time may bring new insight and a different 
duty^ 

U we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Purpose, for 
there was none, yet with what immediate outlooks ; at all 
events, in what mood of mind, the Professor undertook and 
prosecuted this world-pilgrimage, — ^the answer is more dis- 
tinct than favourable. ' A nameless Unrest,' says he, * urged 



126 SARTOR RESARTUS [book li, 

me forward ; to which the outward motion was some momen- 
tary lying solace. Whither should I go ? My Loadstars 
were blotted out ; in that canopy of grim fire shone no star. 
Yet forward must I ; the ground burnt under me ; there was 
no rest for the sole of my foot. I was alone, alone ! Ever 
too the strong inward longing shaped Fantasms for itself: 
towards these, one after the other, must I fruitlessly wander. 
A feeling I had, that for my fever-thirst there was and must 
be somewhere a healing Fountain. To many fondly imagined 
Fountains, the Saints' Wells of these days, did I pilgrim ; to 
great Men, to great Cities, to great Events : but found there 
no healing. In strange countries, as in the well-known ; 
in savage deserts, as in the press of corrupt civilisation, it was 
ever the same : how could your Wanderer escape from — his 
oxsm Shadow ? Nevertheless still Forward ! I felt as if in 
great haste ; to do I saw not what. From the depths of my 
own heart, it called to me, Forwards ! The winds and the 
streams, and all Nature sounded to me. Forwards ! Ach Gott, 
I was even, once for all, a Son of Time.' 

From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic School 
was still active enough ? He says elsewhere : * The Enchiridion 
of Epictetus I had ever with me, often as my sole rational 
companion ; and regret to mention that the nourishment it 
yielded was trifling.' Thou foolish Teufelsdrockh ! How 
could it else ? Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand 
thus much : • The end of Man is cm Action, and not a Thought, j 
though it were the noblest ? } 

' How I lived .? ' writes he once : ' Friend, hast thou con- 
sidered the "rugged all-nourishing Earth," as Sophocles well 
names her ; how she feeds the sparrow on the house-top much 
more her darling, man ? While thou stirrest and livest, thou 
hast a probability of victual. My breakfast of tea has been 
cooked by a Tartar woman, with water of the Amur, who 
wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I have roasted 
wild-eggs in the sand of Sahara ; I have awakened in Paris 
Estrapades and Vienna Malzleins, with no prospect of break- 



CHAP. VI.] SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCK.. ^^^ 

fast beyond elemental liquid. That I had my Living to set. ' 
saved me from Dying, — ^by suicide. In our busy Europe, is 
there not an everlasting demand for Intellect, in the chemical, 
mechanical, political, religious, educational, commercial depart- 
ments ? In Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes ? 
Living ! Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive 
Soul ; how, as with its little finger, it can create provision 
enough for the body (of a Philosopher) ; and then, as with 
both hands, create quite other than provision ; namely, 
spectres to torment itself withal.' 

Poor Teufelsdrockh ! Flying with Hunger always parallel 
to him ; and a whole Infernal Chase in his rear ; so that the 
countenance of Hunger is comparatively a friend's ! Thus 
must he, in the temper of ancient Cain, or of the modern 
Wandering Jew, — save only that he feels himself not guilty 
and but suffering the pains of guilt, — wend to and fro with 
aimless speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface of the 
Earth (by footprints), write his Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh ; 
even as the great Goethe, in passionate words, had to write 
his Sorrows of Werter, before the spirit freed herself, and he 
could become a Man. Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest 
Runner to escape * from his own Shadow ' ! Nevertheless, in 
these sick days, when the Bom of Heaven first descries himself 
(about the age of twenty) in a world such as ours, richer than 
usual in two things, in Truths grown obsolete, and Trades 
grown obsolete, — what can the fool think but that it is all a 
Den of Lies, wherein whoso will not speak Lies and act Lies, 
must stand idle and despair ? Whereby it happens that, for 
your nobler minds, the publishing of some such Work of Art, 
in one or the other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. For 
what is it properly but an Altercation with the Devil, before 
you begin honestly Fighting him.? Your Byron publishes 
his Sorrows of Lord George, in verse and in prose, and 
copiously otherwise : yoxu* Bonaparte represents his Sorrows 
of Napoleon Opera, in an ail-too stupendous style ; with music 
of cannon- volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world ; his stage- 



126 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

'S^hts are the fires of Conflagration ; his rhyme and recitative 
are the tramp of embattled Hosts and the sound of falling 
Cities. — Happier is he who, like our Clothes-Philosopher, can 
write such matter, since it must be written, on the insensible 
Earth, with his shoe-soles only ; and also survive the writing 
thereof ! 



CHAPTER VII 
THE EVERLASTING NO 

Loss of Hope, and of Belief. Profit-and-Loss Philosophy. Teufelsdrockh 
in his darkness and despair still elings to Truth and follows Duty. Inex- 
pressible pains and fears of Unbelief. Fever-crisis : Protest against the 
Everlasting No : Baphometic Fire-Baptism. 

Under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our Pro- 
fessor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual 
nature is nevertheless progressive, and growing : for how can 
the * Son of Time,' in any case, stand still ? We behold him, 
through those dim years, in a state of crisis, of transition : his 
mad Pilgrimings, and general solution into aimless Discon- 
tinuity, what is all this but a mad Fermentation ; wherefrom, 
the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve itself ? 

Such transitions are ever full of pain : thus the Eagle when 
he moults is sickly ; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly 
dash-off the old one upon rocks. What Stoicism soever our 
Wanderer, in his. individual acts and motions, may affect, it is 
clear that there is a hot fever of anarchy and misery raging 
within ; coruscations of which flash out : as, indeed, how could 
there be other ? Have we not seen him disappointed, be- 
mocked of Destiny, through long years ? All that the young 
heart might desire and pray for has been denied ; nay, as in 
the last worst instance, offered and then snatched away. Ever 
an ' excellent Passivity ' ; but of useful, reasonable Activity, 
essential to the former as Food to Hunger, nothing granted : 
till at lengthj in this wild Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize 



CHAP.vii.] THE EVERLASTING NO 129 

for himself an Activity, though useless, unreasonable. Alas, 
his cup of bitterness, which had been filling drop by drop, 
ever since that first 'ruddy morning' in the Hinterschlag 
Gymnasium, was at the very lip ; and then with that poison- 
drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine business, it runs over, and 
even hisses over in a deluge of foam. 

He himself says once, with more justice than originality : 
' Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other 
possession but Hope ; this world of his is emphatically the 
' Place of Hope."" What, then, was our Professor's possession ? 
We see him, for the present, quite shut-out from Hope ; look- 
ing not into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a 
dim copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. 

Alas, shut-out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we yet 
dream of ! For, as he wanders wearisomely through this 
world, he has now lost all tidings of another and higher. Full 
of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend has since 
exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was 
wholly irreligious : * Doubt had darkened into Unbelief,' says 
he; 'shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you 
have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black.'. To such readers 
as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's life, 
and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and- 
Loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is not 
synonymous with Stomach ; who understand, therefore, in oxa: 
Friend's words, ' that, for man's well-being, Faith is properly 
the one thing needful ; how, with it. Martyrs, otherwise weak, 
can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross ; and without 
it. Worldlings puke-up their sick existence, by suicide, in the 
midst of luxury ' : to such it will be clear that, for a piu-e 
moral nature, the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of 
everything. Unhappy young man ! All wounds, the crush of 
long-continued Destitution, the stab of false Friendship and 
of false Love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have 
healed again, had not its life-warmth been withdrawn. Well 
might he exclaim, in his wild way : ' Is there no God, then ; 

I 



130 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first 
Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and seeing it go? 
Has the word Duty no meaning ; is what we call Duty no 
divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, 
made-up of Desire and Fear, of emanations from the Gallows 
and from Doctor Graham's Celestial-Bed ? Happiness of an 
approving Conscience ! Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom 
admiring men have since named Saint, feel that he was " the 
chief of sinners "" ; and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit 
(Wohlgemuth), spend much of his time in fiddling? Foolish 
Wordmonger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic-mill hast 
an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst fain 
grind me out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure, — I tell thee. 
Nay ! To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it 
is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he 
is conscious of Virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of 
suffering only, but of injustice. What then ? Is the heroic 
inspiration we name Virtue but some Passion ; some bubble of 
the blood, bubbling in the direction others profit by ? I know 
not : only this I know. If what thou namest Happiness be 
om- true aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity and 
sound Digestion man may front much. But what, in these 
dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the 
diseases of the Liver ! Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let 
us build our stronghold : there brandishing our frying-pan, as 
censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease 
on the fat things he has provided for his Elect ! ' 

Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many 
have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl- 
cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is 
all a grim Desert, this once-fair world of his ; wherein is 
heard only the howling of wild-beasts, or the shrieks of 
despairing, hate-filled men ; and no Pillar of Cloud by day, 
and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. 
To such length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him. * But 
what boots it (was thufs) ?' cries he : * it is but the common 



CHAP. VII.] THE EVERLASTING NO 131 

lot in this era. Not having come to spiritual majority prior 
to the Steele de Louis Quinze, and not being born purely a 
Loghead {DummkopJ^), thou hadst no other outlook. The 
whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their old Temples 
of the Godhead, which for long have not been rainproof, 
crumble down ; and men ask now : Where is the Godhead ; 
our eyes never saw him r 

Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call 
our Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, 
perhaps at no era of his life was he more decisively the Servant 
of Goodness, the Servant of God, than even now when doubt- 
ing God's existence. ' One circumstance I note,' says he : 
' after all the nameless woe that Inquiry, which for me, what 
it is not always, was genuine Love of Truth, had wrought me, 
I nevertheless still loved Truth, and would bate no jot of my 
allegiance to her. " Truth !"" I cried, " though the Heavens 
crush me for following her : no Falsehood ! though a whole 
celestial Lubberland were the price of Apostasy." In conduct 
it was the same. Had a divine Messenger from the clouds, or 
miraculous Handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed 
to me Tliis thou shalt do, with what passionate readiness, as I 
often thought, would I have done it, had it been leaping into 
the infernal Fire. Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, 
and Mechanical Profit-and-Loss Philosophies, with the sick 
ophthalmia and hallucination they had brought on, was the 
Infinite natmre of Duty still dimly present to me : living with- 
out God in the world, of God's light I was not utterly bereft ; 
if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, could 
nowhere see Him, nevertheless in my heart He was present, 
and His heaven-written Law still stood legible and sacred 
there.' 

Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and 
spiritual destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in his silent 
soul, have endm-ed ! ' The painfuUest feeling,' writes he, ' is 
that of your own Feebleness (UnJcrqft); ever, as the English 
Milton says, to be weak is the true misery. And yet of your 



132 SARTOR RESARTUS [book li. 

Strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what 
you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between 
vague wavering Capability and fixed indubitable Performance, 
what a difference ! A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness 
dwells dimly in us ; which only our Works can render articul- 
ate and decisively discernible. Our Works are the mirror 
wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, 
too, the folly of that impossible Precept, Know thyself; tUl it 
be translated into this partially possible one, Know what thou 
canst work at. 

*But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the 
net-result of my Workings amounted as yet simply to — 
Nothing. How then could I believe in my Strength, when 
there was as yet no mirror to see it in ? Ever did this 
agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous question, 
remain to me insoluble : Hast thou a certain Faculty, a cer- 
tain Worth, such even as the most have not ; or art thou the 
completest Dullard of these modem times ? Alas, the fearful 
Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe? 
Had not my first, last Faith in myself, when even to me the 
Heavens seemed laid open, and I dared to love, been ail-too 
cruelly belied ? The speculative Mystery of Life grew ever 
more mysterious to me : neither in the practical Mystery had 
I made the slightest progress, but been everywhere buffeted, 
foiled, and contemptuously cast out. A feeble unit in the 
middle of a threatening Infinitude, I seemed to have nothing 
given me but eyes, whereby to discern my own wretchedness. 
Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of Enchantment, divided 
me from all living : was there, in the wide world, any true 
bosom I could press trustfully to mine ? O Heaven, No, there 
was none ! I kept a lock upon my lips : why should I speak 
much with that shifting variety of so-called Friends, in whose 
withered, vain and too-hungry souls Friendship was but an 
incredible tradition ? In such cases, yom: resoiu'ce is to talk 
little, and that little mostly from the Newspapers. Now 
when I look back, it was a strange isolation I then lived in. 



CHAP. VIL] THE EVERLASTING NO 

The men and women around me, even speaking with me, were 
but Figures ; I had, practically, forgotten that they were alive 
that they were not merely automatic. In the midst of their 
crowded streets and assemblages, I walked solitary ; and (except 
as it was my own heart, not another's, that I kept devouring) 
savage also, as the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it 
would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself 
tempted and tormented of the Devil ; for a Hell, as I 
imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were more 
frightful : but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, the 
very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as 
believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, 
of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility : it was one huge, 
dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead 
indifference^ to grind me limb from limb. O, the vast, 
gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death ! Why was the 
Living banished thither companionless, conscious ? Why, if 
there is no Devil ; nay, unless the Devil is your God ? ' 

A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, moreover, 
as the worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution even 
of a Teufelsdrockh threaten to fail ? We conjecture that he 
has known sickness ; and, in spite of his locomotive habits, 
perhaps sickness of the chronic sort. Hear this, for example : 
' How beautiful to die of broken-heart, on Paper ! Quite 
another thing in practice ; every window of your Feeling, even 
of your Intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so 
that no pm-e ray can enter ; a whole Drugshop in your inwards ; 
the fordone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of Disgust ! ' 

Putting all which external and internal miseries together, 
may we not find in the following sentences, quite in our Pro- 
fessor's still vein, significance enough.? *From Suicide a 
certain aftershine {Niichschem) of Christianity withheld me : 
perhaps also a certain indolence of character; for, was not 
that a remedy I had at any time within reach ? Often, bow- 
ever, was there a question present to me : Should some one 
now, at the turning of that comer, blow thee suddenly out of 



134 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

Space, into the other World, or other No-world, by pistol- 
shot, — ^how were it ? On which ground, too, I often, in sea- 
storms and sieged cities and other death-scenes, exhibited an 
imperturbability, which passed, falsely enough, for courage.' 

*So had it lasted,' concludes the Wanderer, *so had it 
lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, through long 
years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dew- 
drop was smouldering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. 
Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear ; or once 
only when I, murmuring half-audibly, recited Faust's Death- 
song, that wild Selig der den er im Siegesglanze Jindet (Happy 
whom he finds in Battle's splendour), and thought that of this 
last Friend even I was not forsaken, that Destiny itself could 
not doom me not to die. Having no hope, neither had I any 
definite fear, were it of Man or of Devil : nay, I often felt as 
if it might be solacing, could the Arch-Devil himself, though 
in Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I might tell him a 
little of my mind. And yet, strangely enough, I lived in a con- 
tinual, indefinite, pining fear ; tremulous, pusillanimous, appre- 
hensive of I knew not what ; it seemed as if all things in the 
Heavens above and the Earth beneath would hurt me ; as if the 
Heavens and the Earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring 
monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured. 

* Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in 
the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dog- 
day, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty little 
Rue Saint-Thomas de TEnfer, among civic rubbish enough, 
in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as Nebuchad- 
nezzar's Furnace ; whereby doubtless my spirits were little 
cheered ; when, all at once, there rose a Thought in me, and 
I asked myself : " What art thou afraid of .? Wherefore, like 
a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cower- 
ing and trembling .? Despicable biped ! what is the sum- 
total of the worst that lies before thee.? Death.? Well, 
Death ; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the 
Devil and Man^ may, will or can do against thee ! Hast thou 



CHAP, vm.] CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 135 

not a heart ; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be ; and, as 
a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself 
under thy feet, while it consumes thee ? Let it come, then ; 
I will meet it and defy it ! "" And as I so thought, there 
rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul ; and I shook 
base Fear away from me forever. I was strong, of unknown 
strength ; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that time, the 
temper of my misery was changed : not Fear or whining 
Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance. 

'Thus had the Everlastdjg No (das eimge Nein) pealed 
authoritatively through all the recesses of my Being, of my 
Me ; and then was it that my whole Me stood up, in native 
God-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its Protest. 
Such a Protest, the most important transaction in Life, may 
that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point 
of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said : 
" Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine 
(the Devil's) " ; to which my whole Me now made answer : " / 
am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee ! '■ 

* It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual 
New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism ; perhaps I directly 
thereupon began to be a Man.' 



CHAPTER VIII 

CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 

Teuf elsdrockh turns now outwardly to the Not-me ; and finds wholesomer 
food. Ancient Cities : Mystery of their origin and growth : Invisible in- 
heritances and possessions. Power and virtue of a true Book. Wagram 
Battlefield: "War. Great Scenes beheld by the Pilgrim: Great Events, 
and Great Men. Napoleon, a divine missionary, preaching La carriire 
ouverte aux talens. Teuf elsdrockh at the North Cape : Modern means of 
self-defence. Gunpowder and duelling. The Pilgrim, despising his 
miseries, reaches the Centre of Indifference. 

Though, after this * Baphometic Fire-baptism ' of his, our 
Wanderer signifies that his Unrest was but increased ; as, 
indeed, ' Indignation and Defiance,' especially against things 



136 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK ii. 

in general, are not the most peaceable inmates ; yet can the 
Psychologist surmise that it was no longer a quite hopeless 
Unrest ; that henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to 
revolve round. For the fire-baptised soul, long so scathed and 
thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is 
its Baphometic Baptism : the citadel of its whole kingdom it 
has thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable ; out- 
wards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed with- 
out hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and 
pacificated. Under another figure, we might say, if in that 
great moment, in the Rue Samt-Thxmias de TEnfer, the old 
inward Satanic School was not yet thrown out of doors, it 
received peremptory judicial notice to quit; — whereby, for 
the rest, its howl-chantings, Ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious 
gnashings of teeth, might, in the meanwhile, become only the 
more tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret. 

Accordingly, if we scrutinise these Pilgrimings well, there 
is perhaps discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in 
their madness. Not wholly as a Spectre does Teufelsdrockh 
now storm through the world ; at worst as a spectre-fighting 
Man, nay who will one day be a Spectre-queller. K pilgriming 
restlessly to so many ' Saints' Wells,' and ever without quenching 
of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular wells, whereby 
from time to time some alleviation is ministered. In a word, 
he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to *eat his own 
heart ' ; and clutches round him outwardly on the Not-me for 
wholesomer food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit 
him in a much more natural state ? 

* Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I failed not 
to look upon with interest. How beautiful to see thereby, 
as through a long vista, into the remote Time ; to have as it 
were, an actual section of almost the earliest Past brought 
safe into the Present, and set before your eyes ! There, in 
that old City, was a live ember of Culinary Fire put down, 
say only two-thousand years ago ; and there, burning more or 
less triumphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it has 



CHAP. VIII.] CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 137 

burnt, and still bums, and thou thyself seest the very smoke 
thereof. Ah ! and the far more mysterious live ember of 
Vital Fire was then also put down there ; and still miracu- 
lously bums and spreads ; and the smoke and ashes thereof 
(in these Judgment- Halls and Chmrchyards), and its bellows- 
engines (in these Churches), thou still seest ; and its flame, 
looking out from every kind countenance, and every hateful 
one, still warms thee or scorches thee. 

' Of Man"'s Activity and Attainment the chief results are 
aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition only : such are 
his Forms of Government, with the Authority they rest on ; 
his Customs, or Fashions both of Cloth-habits and of Soul- 
habits ; much more his collective stock of Handicrafts, the 
whole Faculty he has acquired of manipulating Nature : all 
these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, can- 
not in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, 
spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son ; if 
you demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. 
Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, ever 
from Cain and Tubalcain downwards : but where does your 
accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic, and other Manufactiu:- 
ing Skill lie warehoused ? It transmits itself on the atmo- 
spheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision) ; it 
is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In 
like manner, ask me not, Where are the Laws ; where is the 
GovERNMJENT ? In Vain wilt thou go to Schonbrunn, to 
Downing Street, to the Palais Bourbon : thou findest nothing 
there but brick or stone houses, and some bundles of Papers 
tied with tape. Where, then, is that same cunningly-devised 
almighty Government of theirs to be laid hands on ? Every- 
where, yet nowhere : seen only in its works, this too is a thing 
aeriform, invisible ; or if you will, mystic and miraculous. So 
spiritual (geistig) is our whole daily Life : all that we do 
springs out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force ; only like a 
little Cloud-image, or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the 
Actual body itself forth from the great mystic Deep. 



138 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

' Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I reckon- 
up to the extent of three : Cities, with their Cabinets and 
Arsenals ; then tilled Fields, to either or to both of which 
divisions Roads with their Bridges, may belong ; and thirdly 

Books. In which third truly, the last invented, lies a 

worth far surpassing that of the two others. Wondrous in- 
deed is the virtue of a true Book. Not like a dead city of 
stones, yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair ; more like 
a tilled field, but then a spiritual field : like a spiritual 
tree, let me rather say, it stands from year to year, and from 
age to age (we have Books that already number some hundred- 
and-fifty human ages) ; and yearly comes its new produce 
of leaves (Commentaries, Deductions, Philosophical, Political 
Systems ; or were it only Sermons, Pamphlets, Journalistic 
Essays), every one of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for 
it can persuade men. O thou who art able to write a Book, 
which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man 
gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and 
inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City- 
burner ! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor ; but of the 
true sort, namely over the Devil : thou too hast built what 
will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing 
City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic 
Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim. — 
Fool ! why journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian 
fervour, to gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay 
ones of Sacchara ? These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle 
and inert, looking over the Desert, foolishly enough, for the 
last three-thousand years : but canst thou not open thy 
Hebrew Bible, then, or even Luther's Version thereof ? ' 

No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in Battle, 
yet on some Battle-field ; which, we soon gather, must be that 
of Wagram ; so that here, for once, is a certain approximation 
to distinctiveness of date. Omitting much, let us impart what , 
follows : 

' Horrible enough ! A whole Marchfeld strewed with shell- 



CHAP. VIII.] CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 139 

splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men and 
horses ; stragglers still remaining not so much as buried. And 
those red mould heaps : ay, there lie the Shells of Men, out of 
which all the Life and Virtue has been blown ; and now are 
they swept together, and crammed-down out of sight, like 
blown Egg-shells ! — Did Nature, when she bade the Donau 
bring down his mould-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpa- 
thian Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, richest 
level, — intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a corn-bearing Niursery, 
whereon her children might be nursed ; or for a Cockpit, 
wherein they might the more commodiously be throttled and 
tattered ? Were thy three broad Highways, meeting here from 
the ends of Europe, made for Ammunition- wagons, then ? 
Were thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so many ready-built 
Casemates, wherein the house of Hapsburg might batter with 
artillery, and with artillery be battered ? Konig Ottokar, amid 
yonder hillocks, dies under Rodolf s truncheon ; here Kaiser 
Franz falls a-swoon under Napoleon's : within which five cen- 
tiu-ies, to omit the others, how has thy breast, fair Plain, been 
defaced and defiled ! The greensward is tom-up and trampled- 
down ; man's fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedge-rows, and 
pleasant dwellings, blown away with gunpowder ; and the kind 
seedfield lies a desolate, hideous Place of Sculls. — Neverthe- 
less, Nature is at work ; neither shall these Powder-Devilkins 
with their utmost devilry gainsay her : but all that gore and 
carnage will be shrouded-in, absorbed into manure ; and next 
year the Marchfeld will be green, nay greener. Thrifty 
unwearied Nature, ever out of our great waste educing some 
little profit of thy own, — ^how dost thou, from the very carcass 
of the Killer, bring Life for the Living ! 

* What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-pur- 
port and upshot of war ? To my own knowledge, for example, 
there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, 
usually some five-hundred souls. From these, by certain 
" Natural Enemies " of the French, there are successively selected, 
during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men: Dum- 



140 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK II. 

drudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them : 
she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to 
manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can 
weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can 
stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid 
much weeping and swearing, they are selected ; all dressed in 
red ; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two- 
thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain ; and fed 
there till wanted. And now to that same spot, in the south 
of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French 
Dumdrudge, in like manner wending : till at length, after 
infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition ; 
and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his 
hand. Straightway the word ** Fire ! "" is given : and they 
blow the souls out of one another ; and in place of sixty 
brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, 
which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these 
men any quarrel ? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest ! 
They lived far enough apart ; were the entirest strangers ; 
nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, unconsciously, by 
Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How 
then ? Simpleton ! their Governors had fallen-out ; and, 
instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make 
these poor blockheads shoot. — Alas, so is it in Deutschland, 
and hitherto in all other lands ; still as of old, " what devilry 
soever Kings do, the Greeks must pay the piper ! " — In that 
fiction of the English Smollet, it is true, the final Cessation 
of War is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth ; where the 
two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe, 
filled with Brimstone ; light the same, and smoke in one 
another's faces, till the weaker gives in : but from such 
predicted Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and conten- 
tious centuries, may still divide us ! ' 

Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look 
away from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, 
and pertinently enough note what is passing there. We may 



CHAP. VIII.] CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 141 

remark, indeed, that for the matter of spiritual culture, if for 
nothing else, perhaps few periods of his life were richer than 
this. Internally, there is the most momentous instructive 
Course of Practical Philosophy, with Experiments, going on ; 
towards the right comprehension of which his Peripatetic 
habits, favom-able to Meditation, might help him rather than 
hinder. Externally, again, as he wanders to and fro, there 
are, if for the longing heart little substance, yet for the seeing 
eye sights enough : in these so boundless Travels of his, 
granting that the Satanic School was even partially kept 
down, what an incredible knowledge of our Planet, and its 
Inhabitants and their Works, that is to say, of all knowable 
things, might not Teufelsdrockh acquire ! 

* I have read in most Public Libraries,' says he, ' including 
those of Constantinople and Samarcand : in most Colleges, 
except the Chinese Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen 
that there was no studying. Unknown Languages have I 
oftenest gathered from their natural repertory, the Air, by 
my organ of Hearing ; Statistics, Geographies, Topographies 
came, through the Eye, almost of their own accord. The 
ways of Man, how he seeks food, and warmth, and protection 
for himself, in most regions, are ocularly known to me. Like 
the great Hadrian, I meted-out much of the terraqueous 
Globe with a pair of Compasses that belonged to myself only. 

* Of great Scenes why speak ? Three summer days, I 
lingered reflecting, and even composing (dichtete), by the 
Pine-chasms of Vaucluse ; and in that clear Lakelet moistened 
my bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees of Tadmor; 
smoked a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great 
Wall of China I have seen ; and can testify that it is of gray 
brick, coped and covered with granite, and shows only second- 
rate masonry. — Great Events, also, have not I witnessed? 
Kings sweated-down {oMSgemergelt) into Berlin-and-Milan 
Customhouse-Officers ; the World well won, and the World 
well lost ; oftener than once a hundred-thousand individuals 
shot (by each other) in one day. All kindreds and peoples 



142 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

and nations dashed together, and shifted and shovelled into 
heaps, that they might ferment there, and in time unite. 
The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith convulsed Europe 
was groaning in cries that reached Heaven, could not escape 
me. 

* For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection ; 
and can perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly 
escaped me. Great Men are the inspired (speaking and 
acting) Texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof 
a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some 
named History ; to which inspired Texts your numerous 
talented men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the 
better or worse exegetic Commentaries, and wagonload of too- 
stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly Sermons. For my study, 
the inspired Texts themselves ! Thus did not I, in very early 
days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the 
field-chairs, under that shady Tree at Treisnitz by the Jena 
Highway ; waiting upon the great Schiller and greater 
Goethe ; and hearing what I have not forgotten. For "* 

But at this point the Editor recalls his principle of 



caution, some time ago laid down, and must suppress much. 
Let not the sacredness of Laurelled, still more, of CroAvned 
Heads, be tampered with. Should we, at a future day, find 
circumstances altered, and the time come for Publication, 
then may these glimpses into the privacy of the Illustrious 
be conceded ; which for the present were little better than 
treacherous, perhaps traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord 
Byron, therefore, of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and the 
* White Water-roses' (Chinese Carbonari) with their mysteries, 
no notice here ! Of Napoleon himself we shall only, glancing 
from afar, remark that Teufelsdrockh's relation to him seems 
to have been of very varied character. At first we find our 
poor Professor on the point of being shot as a spy; then 
taken into private conversation, even pinched on the ear, yet 
presented with no money ; at last indignantly dismissed, 
almost thrown out of doors, as an ' Ideologist.' ' He himself,' 



CHAP. VIII.] CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 143 

says the Professor, ' was among the completest Ideologists, at 
least Ideopraxists : in the Idea (in der Idee) he lived, moved 
and fought. The man was a Divine Missionary, though 
imconscious of it ; and preached, through the cannon's throat, 
that great doctrine. La carriere ouverte aiuv talens (The Tools 
to him that can handle them), which is our ultimate Political 
Evangel, wherein alone can liberty lie. Madly enough he 
preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are 
wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant ; yet 
as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, if 
you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell 
unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and 
did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even 
theft ; ' whom, notwithstanding, the peaceful Sower will follow, 
and, as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless.' 

More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdrockh's 
appearance and emergence (we know not well whence) in the 
solitude of the North Cape, on that June Midnight. He has 
a ' light-blue Spanish cloak ' hanging round him, as his ' most 
commodious, principal, indeed sole upper-garment \ and stands 
there, on the World-promontory, looking over the infinite 
Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now motionless 
indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. 

' Silence as of death,' writes he ; ' for Midnight, even in 
the Arctic latitudes, has its character : nothing but the granite 
cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving 
Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost North the great Sun 
hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet is his 
cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold ; yet does 
his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous 
fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself 
under my feet. In such moments. Solitude also is invaluable ; 
for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies 
all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen ; and 
before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, 
whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp .? 



144 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

* Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or 
monster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows ; and, 
shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean Bear, hails me in Russian 
speech : most probably, therefore, a Russian Smuggler. With 
courteous brevity, I signify my indifference to contraband 
trade, my humane intentions, yet strong wish to be private. 
In vain : the monster, counting doubtless on his superior 
stature, and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps 
profit, were it with murder, continues to advance ; ever assail- 
ing me with his importunate train-oil breath ; and now has 
advanced, till we stand both on the verge of the rock, the 
deep Sea rippling greedily down below. What argument will 
avail? On the thick Hyperborean, cherubic reasoning, seraphic 
eloquence were lost. Prepared for such extremity, I, deftly 
enough, whisk aside one step ; draw out, from my interior 
reservoirs, a sufficient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say, " Be 
so obliging as retire. Friend (Er ziehe sich zuruch, Freund), 
and with promptitude ! " This logic even the Hyperborean 
imderstands : fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, 
he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well as homicidal 
purposes, need not return. 

* Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder : that it 
makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer 
than I, if thou have more Mind, though all but no Body what- 
ever, then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. Hereby, 
at last, is the Goliath powerless, and the David resistless ; 
savage Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is all. 

* With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few 
things, in this so surprising world, strike me with more 
surprise. Two little visual Spectra of men, hovering with 
insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the Unfathomable, 
and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon, — make pause at 
the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, simul- 
taneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another 
into Dissolution ; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant ! 
Deuce on it (verdammt), the little spitfires ! — ^Nay, I think 



CHAP. vilL] CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 145 

with old Hugo von Trimberg : " God must needs laugh out- 
right, could such a thing be, to see his wondrous Manikins 
here below."' 

But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great 
generality, which is our chief quest here : How prospered the 
inner man of Teufelsdrockh under so much outward shifting ? 
Does Legion still liu-k in him, though repressed ; or has he 
exorcised that Devil's Brood ? We can answer that the 
symptoms continue promising. Experience is the grand 
spiritual Doctor ; and with him Teufelsdrockh has been long 
a patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor 
Friend belong to the numerous class of Incurables, which seems 
not likely, some cxu-e will doubtless be effected. We should 
rather say that Legion, or the Satanic School, was now pretty 
well extirpated and cast out, but next to nothing introduced 
in its room ; whereby the heart remains, for the while, in a 
quiet but no comfortable state. 

* At length, after so much roasting,' thus writes our Auto- 
biographer, * I was what you might name calcined. Pray only 
that it be not rather, as is the more frequent issue, reduced to 
a caput-mortuum ! But in any case, by mere dint of practice, 
I had grown familiar with many things. Wretchedness was 
still wretched ; but I could now partly see through it, and 
despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane Existence, 
had I not found a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted ; and, 
when I looked through his brave garnitures, miserable enough? 
Thy wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought I : but what, 
had they even been all granted ! Did not the Boy Alexander 
weep because he had not two Planets to conquer ; or a whole 
Solar System ; or after that, a whole Universe ? Ach Gott, 
when I gazed into these Stars, have they not looked-down on 
me as if with pity, from their serene spaces ; like Eyes glisten- 
ing with heavenly tears over the little lot of man ! Thousands 
of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been 
swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them 

K 



146 SARTOR RESARTUS [book li. 

any more ; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the 
Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as 
when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. 
Pshaw ! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth ; what 
art thou that sittest whining there ? Thou art still Nothing, 
Nobody : true ; but who, then, is Something, Somebody ? For 
thee the Family of Man has no use ; it rejects thee ; thou art 
wholly as a dissevered limb: so be it; perhaps it is better so!' 

Too-heavy-laden Teufelsdrockh ! Yet surely his bands are 
loosening ; ; one day he will hurl the burden far from him, and 
bound forth free and with a second youth. 

* This,' says our Professor, ' was the Centre of Indiffer- 
ence I had now reached ; through which whoso travels from 
the Negative Pole to the Positive must necessarily pass.' * 



CHAPTER IX 
THE EVERLASTING YEA 

Temptations in the Wilderness : Victory over the Tempter. Annihilation 
of Self. Belief in God, and love to Man. The Origin of Evil, a problem 
ever requiring to be solved anew : Teuf elsdrockh's solution. Love of Hap- 
piness a vain whim: A Higher in man than Love of Happiness. The 
Everlasting Yea. Worship of Sorrow. Voltaire: his task now finished. 
Conviction worthless, impossible, without Conduct. The true Ideal, the 
Actual : Up and work ! 

* Temptations in the Wilderness ! ' exclaims Teufelsdrockh : 
*Have we not all to be tried with such.? Not so easily can the 
old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life 
is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life 
itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force : thus 
have we a warfare ; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought 
battle. For the God-given mandate, WorJc thot, in Welldoing, 
lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, 
in our hearts ; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be 
deciphered and obeyed ; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a 
visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given 



CHAP. IX.] THE EVERLASTING YEA 147 

mandate, Eat thou and be Jilled, at the same time persuasively 
proclaims itself through every nerve, — must not there be a 
confusion, a contest, before the better Influence can become 
the upper ? 

' To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of 
Man, when such God-given mandate first prophetically stirs 
within him, and the Clay must now be vanquished or vanquish, 
— should be carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and 
there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him ; 
defiantly setting him at naught, till he yield and fly. Name 
it as we choose : with or without visible Devil, whether in 
the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous 
moral Desert of selfishness and baseness, — to such Temptation 
are we all called. Unhappy if we are not ! Unhappy if we 
are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never 
blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendour ; but quivers 
dubiously amid meaner lights : or smoulders, in dull pain, in 
darkness, under earthly vapours ! — Our Wilderness is the wide 
World in an Atheistic Century ; our Forty Days are long 
years of suJffering and fasting : nevertheless, to these also 
comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet 
the consciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein 
while life or faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the 
enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of 
sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out 
my way into the higher sunlight slopes — of that Mountain 
which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only ! ' 

He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure ; as figures 
are, once for all, natural to him : * Has not thy Life been 
that of most sufficient men {tiichtigen Manner) thou hast 
known in this generation ? An outflush of foolish young 
Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as many 
weeds as valuable herbs : this all parched away, under the 
Droughts of practical and spiritual Unbelief, as Disappoint- 
ment, in thought and act, often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, 
and Doubt gradually settled into Denial ! If I have had a 



148 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

second-crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit 
under umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought (and 
Doubt); herein too, be the Heavens praised, I am not with- 
out examples, and even exemplars.' , 

So that, for Teufelsdrockh also, there has been a * glorious 
revolution ' : these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted 
Pilgrimings of his were but some purifying 'Temptation 
in the Wilderness,' before his apostolic work (such as it was) 
could begin ; which Temptation is now happily over, and the 
Devil once more worsted ! Was ' that high moment in the 
Rue de TEnfer^ then, properly the turning-point of the battle ; 
when the Fiend said. Worship me, or he torn in shreds ; and 
was answered valiantly with an Apage Satana ? — Singular 
Teufelsdrockh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in 
plain words ! But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper- 
bags, for such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets : 
a typical Shadow, fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric ; no 
clear logical Picture. ' How paint to the sensual eye,' asks he 
once, ' what passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man's Soul ; in 
what words, known to these profane times, speak even afar-oj5 
of the unspeakable ? ' We ask in turn : Why perplex these 
times, profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by omission 
and by commission ? Not mystical only is our Professor, but 
whimsical ; and involves himself, now more than ever, in eye- 
bewildering chiaroscuro. Successive glimpses, here faithfully 
imparted, oiu* more gifted readers must endeavom* to combine 
for their own behoof. 

He says : ' The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out ; 
its howl went silent within me ; and the long-deafened soul 
could now hear. I paused in my wild wanderings ; and sat 
me down to wait, and consider ; for it was as if the hour of 
change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to renounce utterly, 
and say : Fly, then, false shadows of Hope ; I will chase you 
no more, I will believe you no more. And ye too, haggard 
spectres of Fear, I care not for you ; ye too are all shadows 
and a lie. Let me rest here : for I am way- weary and life- 



CHAP. IX.] THE EVERLASTING YEA 149 

weary ; I will rest here, were it but to die : to die or to live 
is alike to me ; alike insignificant.' — And again : * Here, then, 
as I lay in that Centre of Indifference ; cast, doubtless by 
benignant upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy 
dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to a new Heaven 
and a new Earth. The first preliminary moral Act, Annihil- 
ation of Self {Selhst-tbdtung), had been happily accomplished ; 
and my mind^s eyes were now unsealed, and its hands imgyved.' 

Might we not also conjecture that the following passage 
refers to his Locality, during this same ' healing sleep ' ; that 
his Pilgrim-stafF lies cast aside here, on ' the high table-land ' ; 
and indeed that the repose is already taking wholesome effect 
on him .? If it were Tiot that the tone, in some parts, has 
more of riancy, even of levity, than we could have expected ! 
However, in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest 
Dualism : light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on 
in the fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint 
whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece entire. 

* Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing 
and meditating ; on the high table-land, in front of the 
Mountains ; over me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around 
me, for walls, four azure-flowing curtains, — namely, of the 
Four azure Winds, on whose bottom-fringes also I have seen 
gilding. And then to fancy the fair Castles that stood 
sheltered in these Mountain hollows ; with their green flower- 
lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough : or 
better still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a 
Mother baking bread, with her children roimd her : — all 
hidden and protectingly folded-up in the valley-folds; yet 
there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or to see, as 
well as fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my 
mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were wont to speak to 
me (by their steeple-bells) with metal tongue ; and, in almost 
all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smoke- 
clouds ; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might read the 
hour of the day. For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind 



150 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

housewives at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their 
husbands' kettles ; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the 
air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine, 
saying, as plainly as smoke could say : Such and such a 
meal is getting ready here. Not uninteresting ! For you 
have the whole Borough, with all its love-makings and 
scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in minia- 
ture, and could cover it all with your hat. — ^If, in my wide 
Wayfarings, I had learned to look into the business of the 
World in its details, here perhaps was the place for combining 
it into general propositions, and deducing inferences there- 
from. 

' Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in 
anger through the Distance : round some Schreckhorn, as 
yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapour gather, and there 
tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's hair ; 
till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your 
Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapour had 
held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy 
great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a 
World, O Nature ! — Or what is Nature ? Ha ! why do I not 
name thee God ? Art not thou the *^'Living Garment of God" i^ 
O Heavens, is it, in very deed. He, then, that ever speaks 
through thee ; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and 
loves in me ? 

'Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that 
Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my 
soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova 
Zembla ; ah, like the mother's voice to her little child that 
strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults ; like soft 
streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, 
came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, 
a charnel-house with spectres ; but godlike, and my Father's ! 

* With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow 
man : with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wander- 
ing, wayward man ! Art thou not tried, and beaten with 



CHAP. IX.] THE EVERLASTING YEA 151 

stripes, even as I am ? Ever, whether thou bear the royal 
mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so 
heavy-laden ; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my 
Brother, my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, 
and wipe away all tears from thy eyes ! — Truly, the din of 
many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with the mind's 
organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but 
a melting one ; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb 
creature, which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor 
Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother, not my 
cruel Stepdame ; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean 
Endeavours, had become the dearer to me ; and even for his 
sufferings and his sins, I now first named him Brother. Thus 
was I standing in the porch of that " Sanctuary of Sorrow " ; 
by strange, steep ways had I too been guided thither ; and 
ere long its sacred gates would open, and the " Divine Depth 
of Sorrow'''' lie disclosed to me.' 

The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that 
had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, 
and was free. ' A vain interminable controversy,' writes he, 
* touching what is at present called Origin of Evil, or some 
such thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning of the 
world ; and in every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering 
into actual Endeavouring, must first be put an end to. The 
most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incom- 
plete enough Suppression of this controversy ; to a few some 
Solution of it is indispensable. In every new era, too, such 
Solution comes-out in different terms ; and ever the Solution 
of the last era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. 
For it is man's nature to change his Dialect from century to 
century ; he cannot help it though he would. The authentic 
Church-Catechism of our present century has not yet fallen 
into my hands : meanwhile, for my own private behoof, I 
attempt to elucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness as I 
construe, comes of his Greatness ; it is because there is an 
Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite 



152 SARTOR RESARTUS [book II. 

bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and 
Upholsterers and Confectioners of modem Europe undertake, 
in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack happy ? They 
cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two : for the Shoe- 
black also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach ; and 
would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfac- 
tion and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no 
less : • GocTs vnfinite Universe altogether to himself, therein to 
enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose./ 
Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus : 
speak not of them ; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as 
nothing. No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles 
that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with 
half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling 
with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the 
most maltreated of men. — ^ Always there is a black spot in our 
sunshine : it is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves. 

'But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. 
By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we 
come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot ; this we fancy 
belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is 
simple payment of our wages, of our deserts ; requires neither 
thanks nor complaint ; only such overplus as there may be do 
we account Happiness ; any deficit again is Misery. Now 
consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts our- 
selves, and what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each of us, 
— do you wonder that the balance should so often dip the 
wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry : See there, what a 
payment ; was ever worthy gentleman so used ! — I tell thee, 
Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity ; of what thou Jandest 
those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that thou deservest 
to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to 
be only shot : fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a 
hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp. 

* So true is it, what I then said, that the Fraction of Life 
can he increased in valiie not so much by increasing your 



CHAP. IX.] THE EVERLASTING YEA 153 

Numerator as hy lessening your Denominator. Nay, unless 
my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself divided by Zero will give 
Infinity. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then ; thou hast 
the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time 
write : ^' It is only with Renunciation {Entsagen) that Life, 
properly speaking, can be said to begin." 

'I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, 
thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self- 
tormenting, on account of ? Say it in a word : is it not 
because thou art not happy? Because the Thoit (sweet 
gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, 
and lovingly cared-for ? Foolish soul ! What Act of Legis- 
lature was there that thou shouldst be Happy? A little 
while ago thou hadst no right to be at all. What if thou 
wert bom and predestined not to be Happy, but to be 
Unhappy ! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that 
fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to eat ; 
and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given 
thee ? Close thy Byron ; open thy Goethe.'' 

' Es leuchtet mir ein, I see a glimpse of it ! ' cries he else- 
where : ' there is in man a Higher than Love of Happiness : 
he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find 
Blessedness ! Was it not to preach-forth this same Higher 
that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, 
have spoken and suffered ; bearing testimony, through life and 
through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the 
Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom ? Which God- 
inspired Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught ; O 
Heavens ! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even 
till thou become contrite, and learn it ! O, thank thy Destiny 
for these ; thankfully bear what yet remain : thou hadst need 
of them ; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benig- 
nant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic 
Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of 
Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of 
Eternity. Love not Pleasure ; love God. This is the Ever- 



154 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

LASTING Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved : wherein 
whoso walks and works, it is well with him.'^ 

And again : * Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth 
with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained 
thee : thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and 
even because it injiu:es thee ; for this a Greater than Zeno 
was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou that 
" Worship of Sorrow " ? The Temple thereof, founded some 
eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with 
jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures : nevertheless, 
venture forward ; in a low crypt, arched out of falling frag- 
ments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp 
perennially burning.' 

Without pretending to comment on which strange utter- 
ances, the Editor will only remark, that there lies beside them 
much of a still more questionable character ; unsuited to the 
general apprehension ; nay wherein he himself does not see 
his way. Nebulous disquisitions on Religion, yet not without 
bursts of splendour ; on the ' perennial continuance of In- 
spiration ' ; on Prophecy ; that there are * true Priests, as 
Avell as Baal-Priests, in our own day ' : with more of the 
like sort. We select some fractions, by way of finish to 
this farrago. 

' Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire,' thus apostro- 
phises the Professor : ' shut thy sweet voice ; for the task 
appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demon- 
strated this proposition, considerable or otherwise : That the 
M3i:hus of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth 
century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty 
quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and 
folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on 
the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little ! But 
what next ? Wilt thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of 
that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, 
that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live ? What ! 
thou hast no faculty in that kind ? ' Only a torch for burning, 



CHAP. IX.] THE EVERLASTING YEA 155 

no hammer for building ? Take our thanks, then, and 

thyself away. 

' Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me ? Or is 
the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von 
Voltaire will dispute out of me ; or dispute into me ? To the 
" Worship of Sorrow"" ascribe what origin and genesis thou 
pleasest, has not that Worship originated, and been generated ; 
is it not here ? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it 
is of God ! This is Belief ; all else is Opinion, — for which 
latter whoso will, let him worry and be worried.' 

' Neither,' observes he elsewhere, * shall ye tear-out one 
another's eyes, struggling over " Plenary Inspiration," and 
such-like : try rather to get a little even Partial Inspiration, 
each of you for himself. One Bible I know, of whose Plenary 
Inspiration doubt is not so much as possible ; nay with my own 
eyes I saw the God's-Hand writing it : thereof all other Bibles 
are but Leaves, — say, in Picture- Writing to assist the weaker 
faculty.' 

Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an 
end, let him take the following perhaps more intelligible 
passage : 

' To me, in this our life,' says the Professor, ' which is an 
internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems 
questionable. Hast thou in any way a Contention with thy 
brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. 
If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this : " Fellow, 
see ! thou art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the 
world, something from m«/ share : which, by the Heavens, 
thou shalt not ; nay I will fight thee rather." — ^Alas, and the 
whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a *' feast 
of shells," for the substance has been spilled out : not enough 
to quench one Appetite ; and the collective human species 
clutching at them ! — Can we not, in all such cases, rather 
say : " Take it, thou too-ravenous individual ; take that pitiful 
additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which 
thou so wantest ; take it with a blessing : would to Heaven I 



156 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

had enough for thee ! " — ^If Fichte's Wissenschqftslehre be, " to 
a certain extent, Applied Christianity," surely to a still greater 
extent, so is this. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, 
yet a Half Duty, namely the Passive half : could we but do it, 
as we can demonstrate it ! 

* But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is 
worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly 
Conviction is not possible till then ; inasmuch as all Specula- 
tion is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices : 
only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it find 
any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a 
system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 
*' Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action.^ 
On which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in dark- 
ness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn 
may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, 
which to me was of invaluable service : " Do the Duty which 
lies nearest thee,"" which thou knowest to be a Duty ! Thy 
second Duty will already have become clearer. 

' May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual 
Enfranchisement is even this : When your Ideal World, 
wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and in- 
expressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and thrown 
open ; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the 
Lothario in Wilhehn Meister, that your " America is here or 
nowhere " ? The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, 
was never yet occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor, 
miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even 
now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal : work it out 
therefrom ; and working, believe, live, be free. Fool ! the 
Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself : thy 
Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal 
out of : what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or 
that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic ? O thou 
that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest 
bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create. 



CHAP. X.] PAUSE 157 

know this of a truth : the thing thou seekest is already with 
thee, " here or nowhere," couldst thou only see ! 

* But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature : the be- 
ginning of Creation is — Light. Till the eye have vision, the 
whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the 
tempest-tost Soul, as once over the wild- weltering Chaos, it is 
spoken : Let there be Light ! Ever to the greatest that has 
felt such moment, is it not miraculous and God-announcing ; 
even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least. The 
mad primeval Discord is hushed ; the rudely-jumbled conflict- 
ing elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments : deep 
silent rock-foundations are built beneath ; and the skyey vault 
with its everlasting Luminaries above : instead of a dark 
wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encom- 
passed World. 

' I too could now say to myself : Be no longer a Chaos, but 
a World, or even Worldkin. Produce ! Produce ! Were it 
but the pitifuUest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce 
it, in God's name ! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee : out 
vdth it, then. Up, up ! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, 
do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today ; 
for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.' 



CHAPTER X 

PAUSE 

Conversion ; a spiritual attainment peculiar to the modern Era. Teuf els- 
drockh accepts Authorship as his divine calling. The scope of the command 
Thou shalt not steal. — Editor begins to suspect the authenticity of the Bio- 
graphical documents; and abandons them for the great Clothes volume. 
Result of the preceding ten Chapters : Insight into the character of Teu- 
felsdrockh : His fundamental beliefs, and how he was forced to seek and 
find them. 

Thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, in such 
circumstances, might be, followed Teufelsdrockh through the 
various successive states and stages of Growth, Entanglement, 



158 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

Unbelief, and almost Reprobation, into a certain clearer state 
of what he himself seems to consider as Conversion. * Blame 
not the word,' says he ; ' rejoice rather that such a word, 
signifying such a thing, has come to light in our modern Era, 
though hidden from the wisest Ancients. The Old World 
knew nothing of Conversion ; instead of an Ecce Homo^ they 
had only some Choice of Hercules. It was a new-attained 
progress in the Moral Development of man : hereby has the 
Highest come home to the bosoms of the most Limited ; what 
to Plato was but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is 
now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and 
the poorest of their Pietists and Methodists.' 

It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufelsdrockh 
commences : we are henceforth to see him ' work in well-doing,' 
with the spirit and clear aims of a Man. He has discovered 
that the Ideal Workshop he so panted for is even this same 
Actual ill-furnished Workshop he has so long been stumbling 
in. He can say to himself : ' Tools ? Thou hast no Tools ? 
Why, there is not a Man, or a Thing, now alive but has tools. 
The basest of created animalcules, the Spider itself, has a 
spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and power-loom within its 
head : the stupidest of Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, with 
stone-and-lime house to hold it in :/ every being that can live 
can do something :; this let him do. — ^Tools ? Hast thou not 
a Brain, furnished, furnishable vidth some glimmerings of 
Light ; and three fingers to hold a Pen withal ? Never since 
Aaron's rod went out of practice, or even before it, was there 
such a wonder-working Tool: greater than all recorded 
miracles have been performed by Pens. For strangely in this 
so solid-seeming World, which nevertheless is in continual 
restless flux, it is appointed that Sound, to appearance the 
most fleeting, should be the most continuing of all things. 
The Word is well said to be omnipotent in this world ; : man, 
thereby divine, can create as by a Fiat. Awake, arise ! 
Speak forth what is in thee ; what God has given thee, what 
the Devil shall not take away. Higher task than that of 



CHAP. X.] PAUSE 159 

Priesthood was allotted to no man : wert thou but the 
meanest in that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honour enough 
therein to spend and be spent ? 

' By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade 
into a handicraft,' adds Teufelsdrockh, 'have I thenceforth 
abidden. Writings of mine, not indeed known as mine (for 
what am /?), have fallen, perhaps not altogether void, into 
the mighty seed-field of Opinion ; fruits of my unseen sowing 
gratifyingly meet me here and there. I thank the Heavens 
that I have now found my Calling ; wherein, with or without 
perceptible result, I am minded diligently to persevere. 

' Nay how knowest thou,' cries he, * but this and the other 
pregnant Device, now grown to be a world-renowned far- 
working Institution ; like a grain of right mustard-seed once 
cast into the right soil, and now stretching-out strong boughs 
to the four winds, for the birds of the air to lodge in, — may 
have been properly my doing ? Some one's doing, it without 
doubt was ; from some Idea, in some single Head, it did first 
of all take beginning : why not from some Idea in mine ? ' 
Does Teufelsdrockh here glance at that ' Society for the Con- 
servation OF Property {Eigenthums-conservirende Gesellschqfi),'' 
of which SO many ambiguous notices glide spectre-like through 
these inexpressible Paper-bags ? ' An Institution,' hints he, 
*not unsuitable to the wants of the time; as indeed such 
sudden extension proves : for already can the Society number, 
among its office-bearers or corresponding members, the highest 
Names, if not the highest Persons, in Germany, England, 
France ; and contributions, both of money and of meditation, 
pour in from all quarters ; to, if possible, enlist the remaining 
Integrity of the world, and, defensively and with forethought, 
marshal it round this Palladium.' Does Teufelsdrockh mean, 
then, to give himself out as the originator of that so notable 
Eigenihums-conservirende Q Owndom-conserving ') Gesellschqft ; 
and if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it ? He again hints : 
'At a time when the divine Commandment, Thou shalt not 
steal, wherein truly, if well understood, is comprised the whole 



160 SARTOR RESARTUS [book li. 

Hebrew Decalogue, with Solon's and Lycurgus's Constitutions, 
Justinian's Pandects, the Code Napoleon, and all Codes, 
Catechisms, Divinities, Moralities whatsoever, that man has 
hitherto devised (and enforced with Altar-fire and Gallows- 
ropes) for his social guidance : at a time, I say, when this 
divine Commandment has ail-but faded away from the general 
remembrance ; and, with little disguise, a new opposite Com- 
mandment, Thou shalt steal, is everywhere promulgated, — 
it perhaps behoved, in this universal dotage and deliration, 
the soimd portion of mankind to bestir themselves and rally. 
When the widest and wildest violations of that divine right 
of Property, the only divine right now extant or conceivable, 
are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and the 
world has lived to hear it asserted that we have no Property 
in our very Bodies, hut only an accidental Possession and Life- 
rent, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and 
Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, 
keep down the smaller sort of vermin ; but what, except per- 
haps some such Universal Association, can protect us against 
whole meat-devouring and man-devouring hosts of Boa-con- 
strictors ? If, therefore, the more sequestered Thinker have 
wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not 
ill-written Program in the Public Journals, with its high 
Prize-Questions and so liberal Prizes, could have proceeded, — 
let him now cease such wonder ; and, with undivided faculty, 
betake himself to the Concurrenz (Competition).' 

We ask : Has this same * perhaps not ill-Avritten Program^ 
or any other authentic Transaction of that Property-conserving 
Society, fallen under the eye of the British Reader, in any 
Joimial foreign or domestic ? If so, what are those Prize- 
Questions ; what are the terms of Competition, and when and 
where ? No printed Newspaper-leaf, no farther light of any 
sort, to be met with in these Paper-bags ! Or is the whole 
business one other of those whimsicalities and perverse inex- 
plicabilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdrockh, meaning much or 
nothing, is pleased so often to play fast-and-loose with us ? 



CHAP. X.] PAUSE 161 

Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utterance to 
a painful suspicion, which, through late Chapters, has begun to 
haunt him ; paralysing any little enthusiasm that might still 
have rendered his thorny Biographical task a labour of love. 
It is a suspicion grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed 
almost into certainty by the more and more discernible humor- 
istico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdrockh, in whom under- 
ground humours and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel within 
wheel, defy all reckoning : a suspicion, in one word, that 
these Autobiographical Documents are partly a mystification ! 
What if many a so-called Fact were little better than a Fiction ; 
if here we had no direct Camera-obscura Picture of the 
Professor's History ; but only some more or less fantastic 
Adumbration, symbolically, perhaps significantly enough, 
shadowing-forth the same ! Our theory begins to be that, in 
receiving as literally authentic what was but hieroglyphically 
so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in that case we scruple not 
to name Hofrath Nose-of-Wax, was made a fool of, and set 
adrift to make fools of others. Could it be expected, indeed, 
that a man so known for impenetrable reticence as Teufels- 
drockh, would all at once frankly unlock his private citadel to 
an English Editor and a German Hofrath ; and not rather 
deceptively mlock both Editor and Hofrath in the labyrinthic 
tortuosities and covered-ways of said citadel (having enticed 
them thither), to see, in his half-devilish way, how the fools 
would look ? 

Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will perhaps find 
himself short. On a small slip, formerly thrown aside as 
blank, the ink being ail-but invisible, we lately notice, and 
with effort decipher, the following : ' What are your 
historical Facts ; still more your biographical ? Wilt thou 
know a Man, above all a Mankind, by stringing-together 
beadrolls of what thou namest Facts ? ' The Man is the spirit 
he worked in ; not what he did, but what he became.; Facts 
are engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. 
And then how your Block-head (DummJco^f) studies not their 



162 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

Meaning ; but simply whether they are well or ill cut, what he 
calls Moral or Immoral ! Still worse is it with your Bungler 
(Pfuscher) : such I have seen reading some Rousseau, with 
pretences of interpretation ; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent- 
of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile.' Was the Pro- 
fessor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present 
boasts himself, might mistake the Teufelsdrockh Serpent-of- 
Etemity in like manner ? For which reason it was to be 
altered, not without underhand satire, into a plainer Symbol ? 
Or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, half-truisms, which 
if he can but set on the back of a Figure, he cares not 
whither it gallop ? We say not with certainty ; and indeed, 
so strange is the Professor, can never say. If our suspicion 
be wholly unfounded, let his own questionable ways, not our 
necessary circumspectness, bear the blame. 

But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed 
exhausted Editor determines here to shut these Paper-bags 
for the present. Let it suffice that we know of Teufelsdrockh, 
§0 far, if ' not what he did, yet what he became ' : the rather, 
as his character has now taken its ultimate bent, and no new 
revolution, of importance, is to be looked for. The im- 
prisoned Chrysalis is now a winged Psyche : and such, where- 
soever be its flight, it will continue. To trace by what 
complex gyrations (flights or involuntary waftings) through 
the mere external Life-element, Teufelsdrockh reaches his 
University Professorship, and the Psyche clothes herself in 
civic Titles, without altering her now fixed nature, — would be 
comparatively an unproductive task, were we even unsuspicious 
of its being, for us at least, a false and impossible one. His 
outward Biography, therefore, which, at the Blumine Lover's- 
Leap, we saw churned utterly into spray-vapoiu-, may hover in 
iJiat condition, for aught that concerns us here. Enough 
that by survey of certain ' pools and plashes,' we have ascer- 
tained its general direction ; do we not already know that, 
by one way and other, it htis long since rained-down again 
into a stream ; and even now, at Weissnichtwo, flows deep 



CHAP. X.] PAUSE 163 

and still, fraught with the Philosophy of Clothes, and visible 
to whoso will cast eye thereon ? Over much invaluable 
matter, that lies scattered, like jewels among quarry-rubbish, 
in those Paper-catacombs, we may have occasion to glance 
back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right place : 
meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended. 

If now, before reopening the great Clothes-Volume, we ask 
what our degree of progress, during these Ten Chapters, has 
been, towards right understanding of the Clothes-Philosophy, 
let not our discouragement become total. To speak in that 
old figure of the Hell-gate Bridge over Chaos, a few flying 
pontoons have perhaps been added, though as yet they drift 
straggling on the Flood ; how far they will reach, when once 
the chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, only 
be matter of conjecture. 

So much we already calculate : Through many a little 
loophole, we have had glimpses into the internal world of 
Teufelsdrockh ; his strange mystic, almost magic Diagram of 
the Universe, and how it was gradually drawn, is not hence- 
forth altogether dark to us. Those mysterious ideas on Time, 
which merit consideration, and are not wholly unintelligible 
with such, may by and by prove significant. Still more may 
his somewhat peculiar view of Natm'e, the decisive Oneness 
he ascribes to Nature. How all Nature and Life are but one 
Garment, a * Living Garment,' woven and ever aweaving in 
the ' Loom of Time ' ; is not here, indeed, the outline of a 
whole Clothes-Philosophy ; at least the arena it is to work in ? 
Remark, too, that the Character of the Man, nowise without 
meaning in such a matter, becomes less enigmatic : amid so 
much tumultuous obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do 
not a certain indomitable Defiance and yet a boimdless Rever- 
ence seem to loom forth, as the two mountain-summits, on 
whose rock-strata all the rest were based and built ? 

Nay further, may we not say that Teufelsdrdckh's Bio- 
graphy, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical 
truth, exhibits a man, as it were preappointed for Clothes- 



164 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ii. 

Philosophy ? To look through the Shows of things into 
Things themselves he is led and compelled. The ' Passivity ' 
given him by birth is fostered by all turns of his fortime. 
Everywhere cast out, like oil out of water, from mingling in 
any Employment, in any public Communion, he has no 
portion but Solitude, and a life of Meditation. The whole 
energy of his existence is directed, through long years, on one 
task : that of endming pain, if he cannot cure it. Thus 
everywhere do the Shows of things oppress him, withstand 
him, threaten him with fearfullest destruction : only by 
victoriously penetrating into Things themselves can he find 
peace and a stronghold. But is not this same looking- 
through the Shows, or Vestures, into the Things, even the 
first preliminary to a Philosophy of Clothes ? Do we not, in 
all this, discern some beckonings towards the true higher 
purport of such a Philosophy ; and what shape it must 
assume with such a man, in such an era ? 

Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous Reader 
is not utterly without guess whither he is bound : nor, let us 
hope, for all the fantastic Dream-Grottoes through which, as 
is our lot with Teufelsdrockh, he must wander, will there be 
wanting between whiles some twinkling of a steady Polar Star. 



BOOK THIRD 



CHAPTER I 
INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 

Story of George Fox the Quaker ; and his perennial suit of Leather. A man 
God-possessed, witnessing for spiritual freedom and manhood. 

As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufelsdrockh, 
from an early part of this Clothes- Volume, has more and more 
exhibited himself. Striking it was, amid all his perverse cloudi- 
ness, with what force of vision and of heart he pierced into the 
mystery of the World ; recognising in the highest sensible pheno- 
mena, so far as Sense went, only fresh or faded Raiment ; yet 
ever, under this, a celestial Essence thereby rendered visible : 
and while, on the one hand, he trod the old rags «* Matter, 
with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other everywhere 
exalted Spirit above all earthly principalities and powers, and 
worshipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a true 
Platonic mysticism. What the man ultimately purposed by 
thus casting his Greek-fire into the general Wardrobe of the 
Universe ; what such, more or less complete, rending and burn- 
ing of Garments throughout the whole compass of Civilised 
Life and Speculation, should lead to ; the rather as he was no 
Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like Rousseau, recom- 
mend either bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a return to the 
savage state : all this our readers are now bent to discover ; 
this is, in fact, properly the gist and purport of Professor 
Teufelsdrockh's Philosophy of Clothes. 

Be it remembered, however, that such purport is here not 



166 SARTOR RESARTUS [book iii. 

so much evolved, as detected to lie ready for evolving. We 
are to guide our British Friends into the new Gold-country, 
and show them the mines ; nowise to dig-out and exhaust its 
wealth, which indeed remains for all time inexhaustible. Once 
there, let each dig for his own behoof, and enrich himself. 

Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this of 
the Professor's, can our course now more than formerly be 
straightforward, step by step, but at best leap by leap. Signi- 
ficant Indications stand-out here and there ; which for the 
critical eye, that looks both widely and narrowly, shape them- 
selves into some ground-scheme of a Whole : to select these 
with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be possible, 
and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, a passable 
Bridge be efiected : this, as heretofore, continues our only 
method. Among such light-spots, the following, floating in 
much wild matter about Perfectibility, has seemed worth 
clutching at : 

' Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modem History,' 
says Teufelsdrockh, ' is not the Diet of Worms, still less the 
Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle ; 
but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, 
and treated with some degree of ridicule by others : namely, 
George Fox's making to himself a suit of Leather. This man, 
the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was one 
of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine 
Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across 
all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine 
through, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on 
their souls : who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, 
God-possessed ; or even Gods, as in some periods it has 
chanced. Sitting in his stall ; working on tanned hides, 
amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a name- 
less flood of rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a Living 
Spirit belonging to him ; also an antique Inspired Volume, 
through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, 
and discern its celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of 



CHAP. I.] INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 167 

shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an 
honoiu-able Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post 
of Thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful 
sewing, — ^was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind : but 
ever amid the boring and hammering came tones from that 
far country, came Splendours and Terrors ; for this poor 
Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man ; and the Temple of Im- 
mensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, was 
full of holy mystery to him. 

' The Clergy of the neighbourhood, the ordained Watchers 
and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened with un- 
affected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the 
solution of such doubts, to " drink beer and dance with the 
girls." Blind leaders of the blind ! For what end were their 
tithes levied and eaten ; for what were their shovel-hats 
scooped-out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt-on ; 
and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, 
and other racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth, — if 
Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly with its ad- 
juncts the grand Reality ? Fox turned from them, with tears 
and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather-parings and his Bible. 
Mountains of encumbrance, higher than ^tna, had been 
heaped over that Spirit : but it was a Spirit, and would not 
lie biu-ied there. Through long days and nights of silent 
agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free : 
how its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, 
as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and 
emerged into the light of Heaven ! That Leicester shoe-shop, 
had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican or 
Loretto-shrine. — " So bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed 
in,"" groaned he, *' with thousand requisitions, obligations, 
straps, tatters, and tagrags, I can neither see nor move : 
not my own am I, but the World's ; and Time flies fast, and 
Heaven is high, and Hell is deep : Man ! bethink thee, if 
thou hast power of Thought ! Why not ; what binds me 
here ? Want, want ! — Ha, of what ? Will all the shoe- 



168 SARTOR RESARTUS [book lii. 

wages under the Moon ferry me across into that far Land 
of Light ? Only Meditation can, and devout Prayer to God. 
I will to the woods : the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild- 
berries feed me ; and for Clothes, cannot I stitch myself one 
perennial suit of Leather ! " 

* Historical Oil-painting,' continues Teufelsdrockh, ' is one 
of the Arts I never practised ; therefore shall I not decide 
whether this subject were easy of execution on the canvas. 
Yet often has it seemed to me as if such first outflashing 
of man's Freewill, to lighten, more and more into Day, the 
Chaotic Night that threatened to engulf him in its hindrances 
and its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there is in 
History. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye 
and understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, 
when he spreads-out his cutting-board for the last time, and 
cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them to- 
gether into one continuous all-including Case, the farewell 
service of his awl ! Stitch away, thou noble Fox : every 
prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of 
Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy 
elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is 
bearing thee across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity 
holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty ; 
were the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, 
and thou art he ! 

^* Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest 
height ;\and for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. 
Surely if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Dio- 
genes, was the greatest man of Antiquity, only that he wanted 
Decency, then by stronger reason is George Fox the greatest 
of the Modems, and greater than Diogenes himself : for he 
too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting 
aside all props and shoars ; yet not, in half-savage Pride, 
undervaluing the Earth ; valuing it rather, as a place to yield 
him warmth and food, he looks Heavenward from his Earth, 
and dwells in an element of Mercy and Worship, with a still 



CHAP. L] INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 169 

Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub did nowise witness. Great, 
truly, was that Tub ; a temple from which man's dignity and 
divinity was scornfully preached abroad ; but greater is the 
Leather Hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and 
not in Scorn but in Love.' 

George Fox's ' perennial suit,' with all that it held, has been 
worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries : why, in a dis- 
cussion on the Perfectibility of Society, reproduce it now ? 
Not out of blind sectarian partisanship : Teufelsdrockh him- 
self is no Quaker ; with all his pacific tendencies, did not we 
see him, in that scene at the North Cape, with the Archangel 
Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms ? 

For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more 
meant in this passage that meets the ear. At the same time, 
who can avoid smiling at the earnestness and Boeotian simpli- 
city (if indeed there be not an underhand satire in it), with 
which that * Incident ' is here brought forward ; and, in the 
Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst in 
Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation ! Does Teufelsdrockh 
anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable 
class of the community, by way of testifying against the 
* Mammon-god,' and escaping from what he calls * Vanity's 
Workhouse and Ragfair,' where doubtless some of them are 
toiled and whipped and hood- winked sufficiently, — will sheathe 
themselves in close-fitting cases of Leather? The idea is 
ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty lay aside its robes 
of state, and Beauty its frills and train-gowns, for a second- 
skin of tanned hide ? By which change Huddersfield and 
Manchester, and Coventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, 
were reduced to hungry solitudes ; and only Day and Martin 
could profit. For neither would Teufelsdrockh's mad day- 
dream, here as we persume covertly intended, of levelling 
Society {levelling it indeed with a vengeance, into one huge 
drowned marsh !), and so attaining the political efi'ects of 
Nudity without its frigorific or other consequences, — be 



170 SARTOR RESARTUS [book iii. 

thereby realised. Would not the rich man purchase a water- 
proof suit of Russia Leather ; and the high-born Belle step- 
forth in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy : the black 
cowhide being left to the Drudges and Gibeonites of the 
world ; and so all the old Distinctions be reestablished ? 

Or has the Professor his own deeper intention ; and laughs 
in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are 
but a part thereof? 



CHAPTER II 

CHURCH-CLOTHES 

Church-Clothes defined ; the Forms under which the Religious Principle is 
temporarily embodied. Outward Religion originates by Society : Society 
becomes possible by Religion. The condition of Church-Clothes in our 
time. 

Not less questionable is his Chapter on Church-Clothes ^ 
which has the farther distinction of being the shortest in the 
Volume. We here translate it entire : 

* By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised that I mean 
infinitely more than Cassocks and Surplices ; and do not at 
all mean the mere haberdasher Sunday Clothes that men go 
to Church in. Far from it ! Church-Clothes, are, in our 
vocabulary, the Forms, the Vestures, under which men have at 
various periods embodied and represented for themselves the 
Religious Principle ; that is to say, invested the Divine Idea 
of the World with a sensible and practically active Body, so 
that it might dwell among them as a living and life-giving 
Word. 

' These are unspeakably the most important of all the ves- 
tures and garnitures of Human Existence. They are first 
spun and woven, I may say, by that wonder of wonders. 
Society ; for it is still only when " two or three are gathered 
together," that Religion, spiritually existent, and indeed inde- 



CHAP. II.] CHURCH-CLOTHES 171 

structible, however latent, in each, first outwardly manifests 
itself (as with "cloven tongues of fire"), and seeks to be 
embodied in a visible Communion and Church Militant. 
Mystical, more than magical, is that Communing of Soul 
with Soul, both looking heavenward : here properly Soul first 
speaks with Soul ; for only in looking heavenward, take it in 
what sense you may, not in looking earthward, does what we 
can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible. 
How true is that of Novalis : |" It is certain, my Belief gains 
quite infinitely the moment I can convince another mind 
thereof" ! ' Gaze thou in the face of thy Brother, in those 
eyes where plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those 
where rages the lurid conflagration of Anger ; feel how thy 
own so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with 
the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is 
aU one limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of 
deadly-grappling Hate) ; and then say what miraculous virtue 
goes out of man into man. But if so, through all the thick- 
plied hulls of our Earthly Life ; how much more when it is 
of the Divine Life we speak, and inmost Me is, as it were, 
brought into contact with inmost Me ! 

' Thus was it that I said, the Church-Clothes are first spun 
and woven by Society; outward Religion originates by Society, 
Society becomes possible by Religion. Nay, perhaps, every 
conceivable Society, past and present, may well be figured as 
properly and wholly a Church, in one or other of these three 
predicaments : an audibly preaching and prophesying Church, 
which is the best ; second, a Church that struggles to preach 
and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come ; and 
third and worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which 
only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies 
that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, 
or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, 
let him,' says the oracular Professor, * read on, light of heart 
{getrosten Muihes). 

* But with regard to your Church proper, and the Church- 



172 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK III. 

Clothes specially recognised as Church- Clothes, I remark, fear- 
lessly enough, that without such Vestures and sacred Tissues 
Society has not existed, and will not exist. For if Govern- 
ment is, so to speak, the outward Skin of the Body Politic, 
holding the whole together and protecting it ; and all your 
Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of 
head, are the Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous 
Tissues (lying under such Skin), whereby Society stands and 
works ; — then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and Nervous 
Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circulation to the 
whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue the Bones and 
Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or animated only by a 
Galvanic vitality ; the Skin would become a shrivelled pelt, or 
fast-rotting raw-hide ; and Society itself a dead carcass, — 
deserving to be buried. Men were no longer Social, but 
Gregarious ; which latter state also could not continue, but 
must gradually issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, 
savage isolation, and dispersion ; — ^whereby, as we might 
continue to say, the very dust and dead body of Society would 
have evaporated and become abolished. Such, and so all- 
important, all-sustaining, are the Church-Clothes to civilised 
or even to rational men. 

' Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church- 
Clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows : nay, far worse, 
many of them have become mere hollow Shapes, or Masks, 
under which no living Figure or Spirit any longer dwells ; but 
only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive 
their trade ; and the mask still glares on you with its glass- 
eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life, — some generation-and-half 
after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in unnoticed 
nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith to 
reappear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. As a Priest, 
or Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest of all 
men, so is a Sham-priest {Schein-priester) the falsest and 
basest ; neither is it doubtful that his Canonicals, were they 
Popes' Tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make 



CHAP. III.] SYMBOLS 173 

bandages for the wounds of mankind ; or even to burn into 
tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes. 

' All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my 
Second Volume, On the Palingenesia, or Newhirth of Society, 
which volume, as treating practically of the Wear, Destruc- 
tion, and Retexture of Spiritual Tissues, or Garments, forms, 
properly speaking, the Transcendental or ultimate Portion of 
this my work on Clothes, and is already in a state of forward- 
ness.' 

And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary 
being added, does Teufelsdrockh, and must his Editor now, 
terminate the singular chapter on Church-Clothes ! 



CHAPTER III 

SYMBOLS 

The benignant eflScaciea of Silence and Secrecy. Symbols ; revelations of 
the Infinite in the Finite: Man everywhere encompassed by them; 
lives and works by them. Theory of Motive-millwrights, a false account 
of human nature. Symbols of an extrinsic value ; as Banners, Standards : 
Of intrinsic value ; as Works of Art, Lives and Deaths of Heroic men. 
Religious Symbols ; Christianity. Symbols haUowed by Time ; but finally 
defaced and desecrated. Many superannuated Symbols in our time, 
needing removal. 

Probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing 
obscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of ovoc Pro- 
fessor's speculations on Symbols. To state his whole doctrine, 
indeed, were beyond our compass : nowhere is he more 
mysterious, impalpable, than in this of 'Fantasy being the 
organ of the Godlike ' ; and how '' Man thereby, though based, 
to all seeming, on the small Visible, does nevertheless extend 
down into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which 
Invisible, indeed, his Life is properly the bodying forth.'' Let 
us, omitting these high transcendental aspects of the matter, 
study to glean (whether from the Paper-bags or the Printed 
Volume) what little seems logical and practical, and cunningly 



174 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK III. 

arrange it into such degree of coherence as it will assume. 
By way of proem, take the following not injudicious remarks : 
*The benignant efficacies of Concealment,' cries our Pro- 
fessor, * who shall speak or sing ? Silence and Secrecy ! 
Altars might still be raised to them (were this an altar- 
building time) for universal worship. ' Silence is the element 
in which great things fashion themselves together ; that at 
length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the 
daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not 
William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have 
known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, 
forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. 
Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold 
thy tongue far one day : on the morrow, how much clearer 
are thy piuposes and duties ; what wreck and rubbish have 
those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive 
noises were shut out ! Speech is too often not, as the French- 
man defined it, the art of concealing Thought ; but of quite 
stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to 
conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As 
the Swiss Inscription says : Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen 
ist golden (Speech is silvern. Silence is golden) ; or as I 
might rather express it : Speech is of Time, Silence is of 
Eternity. 

* Bees will not work except in darkness ; Thought will not 
work except in Silence : neither will Virtue work except in 
Secrecy. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand 
"b. doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of 
" those secrets known to all." Is not Shame (Schaam) the 
soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals.? 
Like other plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be 
hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. Let the sun shine 
on it, nay do but look at it privily thyself, the root withers, 
and no flowers will glad thee, O my Friends, when we view 
the fair clustering flowers that overwreathe, for example, the 
Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and 



CHAP. III.] SYMBOLS 175 

hues of Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer 
that grubs them up by the roots, and with grinning, grunting 
satisfaction, shows us the dung they flourish in ! Men speak 
much of the Printing-Press with its Newspapers : du Himmel ! 
what are these to Clothes and the Tailor's Goose ? ' 

* Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, 
and connected with still greater things, is the wondrous agency 
of Symbols. In a Symbol there is concealment and yet revela- 
tion : here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, 
comes a double significance. And if both the Speech be itself 
high, and the Silence fit and noble, how expressive will their 
union be ! Thus in many a painted Device, or simple Seal- 
emblem, the commonest Truth stands out to us proclaimed 
with quite new emphasis. 

' For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland 
plays into the small prose domain of Sense, and becomes in- 
corporated therewith. In the Symbol proper, what we can 
call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, 
some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite ; the Infinite 
is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and 
as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man 
guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched. He 
everywhere finds himself encompassed with Symbols, recog- 
nised as such or not recognised : the Universe is but one vast 
Symbol of God ; nay if thou wilt have it, what is man him- 
self but a Symbol of God ; is not all that he does symbolical ; 
a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given force that is in 
him ; a " Gospel of Freedom," which he, the " Messias of 
Nature," preaches, as he can, by act and word ? Not a Hut 
he builds but is the visible embodiment of a Thought ; but 
bears visible record of invisible things ; but is, in the transcen- 
dental sense, symbolical as well as real.' 

' Man,' says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal con- 
trast with these high-soaring delineations, which we have here 
cut-short on the verge of the inane, *Man is by birth some- 
what of an owl. Perhaps, too, of all the owleries that ever 



176 SARTOR RESARTUS [book iii. 

possessed him, the most owlish, if we consider it, is that of 
your actually existing Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic tricks 
enough man has played, in his time ; has fancied himself 
to be most things, down even to an animated heap of Glass : 
but to fancy himself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains 
and Pleasures on, was reserved for this his latter era. There 
stands he, his Universe one huge Manger, filled with hay and 
thistles to be weighed against each other ; and looks long- 
eared enough. Alas, poor devil ! spectres are appointed to 
haunt him : one age he is hagridden, bewitched ; the next, 
priestridden, befooled ; in all ages, bedevilled. And now the 
Genius of Mechanism smothers him worse than any Nightmare 
did ; till the Soul is nigh choked out of him, and only a kind 
of Digestive, Mechanic life remains. In Earth and in Heaven 
he can see nothing but Mechanism ; has fear for nothing else, 
hope in nothing else : the world would indeed grind him to 
pieces ; but cannot he fathom the Doctrine of Motives, and 
cunningly compute these, and mechanise them to grind the 
other way ? 

* Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by enchant- 
ment, you had but to bid him open his eyes and look. In 
which country, in which time, was it hitherto that man's 
history, or the history of any man, went-on by calculated or 
calculable " Motives'" ? What make ye of your Christianities, 
and Chivalries, and Reformations, and Marseillese Hymns, 
and Reigns of Terror? Nay, has not perhaps the Motive- 
grinder himself been in Love ? Did he never stand so much 
as a contested Election ? Leave him to Time, and the medi- 
cating virtue of Nature.' 

' Yes, Friends,' elsewhere observes the Professor, ^ not our 
Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King 
over us ; I might say. Priest and Prophet to lead us heaven- 
ward ; or Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward. Nay, 
even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sense but the imple- 
ment of Fantasy ; the vessel it drinks out of ? Ever in the 
dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of 



CHAP. III.] SYMBOLS 177 

Madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), 
that gleams-in from the circumambient Eternity, and colours 
with its own hues our little islet of Time. The Understanding 
is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make it ; but 
Fantasy is thy eye, with its colour-giving retina, healthy or 
diseased. Have not I myself known five-hundred living soldiers 
sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which 
they called their Flag ; which, had you sold it at any market- 
cross, would not have brought above three groschen ? Did 
not the whole Hungarian Nation rise, like some tumultuous 
moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron 
Crown ; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and 
commercial value little differing from a horse-shoe ? It is in 
and through Symbols that man, consciously or unconsciously, 
lives, works, and has his being : those ages, moreover, are 
accounted the noblest which can the best recognise symbolical 
worth, and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, 
to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation 
of the Godlike .? 

' Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they have 
both an extrinsic and intrinsic value ; oftenest the former 
only. What, for instance, was in that clouted Shoe, which 
the Peasants bore aloft with them as ensign in their Bauern- 
hrieg (Peasants' War).? Or in the Wallet-and-staff round 
which the Netherland Gueux, glorying in that nickname of 
Beggars, heroically rallied and prevailed, though against King 
Philip himself ? Intrinsic significance these had none ; only 
extrinsic ; as the accidental Standards of multitudes more or 
less sacredly uniting together ; in which union itself, as above 
noted, there is ever something mystical and borrowing of the 
Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or stood, the 
stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms ; military Banners everywhere; 
and generally all national or other sectarian Costumes and 
Customs : they have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even 
worth ; but have acquired an extrinsic one. Nevertheless 
through all these there glimmers something of a Divine Idea ; 

M 



178 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK ill. 

as through military Banners themselves, the Divine Idea of 
Duty, of heroic Daring ; in some instances of Freedom, of 
Right. Nay the highest ensign that men ever met and 
embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an 
accidental extrinsic one. 

' Another matter it is, however, when your Symbol has 
intrinsic meaning, and is of itself Jit that men should unite 
round it. Let but the Godlike manifest itself to Sense; let 
but Eternity look, more or less visibly, through the Time- 
Figure (Zeitbild) ! Then is it fit that men unite there ; and 
worship together before such Symbol ; and so from day to day, 
and from age to age, superadd to it new divineness. 

* Of this latter sort are all true Works of Art : in them (if 
thou know a Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice) wilt thou 
discern Eternity looking though Time ; the Godlike rendered 
visible. Here too may an extrinsic value gradually superadd 
itself : thus certain Iliads, and the like, have, in three- thousand 
years, attained quite new significance. But nobler than all in 
this kind are the Lives of heroic god-inspired Men'*; for what 
other Work of Art is so divine ? In Death too, in the Death 
of the Just, as the last perfection of a Work of Art, may we 
not discern symbolic meaning ? In that divinely transfigured 
Sleep, as of Victory, resting over the beloved face which now 
knows thee no more, read (if thou canst for tears) the conflu- 
ence of Time with Eternity, and some gleam of the latter 
peering through. 

' Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist or 
Poet has risen into Prophet, and all men can recognise a 
present God, and worship the same : I mean religious Symbols. 
Various enough have been such religious Symbols, what we 
call Religions ; as men stood in this stage of culture or the 
other, and could worse or better body-forth the Godlike : some 
Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth ; many with only an 
extrinsic. K thou ask to what height man has carried it 
in this manner, look on our divinest Symbol : on Jesus of 
Nazarethj and His Life, and his Biography, and what followed 



CHAP. III.] SYMBOLS 179 

therefrom. Higher has the human Thought not yet reached : 
this is Christianity and Christendom ; a Symbol of quite 
perennial, infinite character ; whose significance will ever 
demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest. 

*But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacredness 
of Symbols, so likewise in his progress he at length defaces, or 
even desecrates them; and Symbols, like all terrestrial Garments, 
wax old. Homer's Epos has not ceased to be true ; yet it is 
no longer our Epos, but shines in the distance, if clearer and 
clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a receding Star. It 
needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted and 
artificially brought near us, before we can so much as know 
that it was a Sun. So likewise a day comes when the Runic 
Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness ; and many 
an African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be utterly 
abolished. For all things, even Celestial Luminaries, much 
more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, their culmination, 
their decline.' 

' Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal Sceptre 
is but a piece of gilt- wood ; that the Pyx has become a most 
foolish box, and truly, as Ancient Pistol thought, " of little 
price.*" A right Conjuror might I name thee, couldst thou 
conjure back into these wooden tools the divine virtue they 
once held.' 

* Of this thing, however, be certain : wouldst thou plant for 
Eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, 
his Fantasy and Heart; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, 
then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his Self-love 
and Arithmetical Understanding, what will grow there. A 
Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World will we call him, 
the Poet and inspired Maker ; who, Prometheus-like, can shape 
new Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it there. 
Such too will not always be wanting ; neither perhaps now are. 
Meanwhile, as the average of matters goes, we account him 
Legislator and wise who can so much as tell when a Symbol 
has grown old, and gently remove it. 



180 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III 

*When, as the last English Coronation^ was preparing,' 
concludes this wonderful Professor, 'I read in their News- 
papers that the " Champion of England," he who has to offer 
battle to the Universe for his new King, had brought it so far 
that he could now " mount his horse with little assistance," 
I said to myself : Here also we have a Symbol well-nigh 
superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not 
the tatters and rags of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in 
this Ragfair of a World) dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, 
to halter, to tether you ; nay, if you shake them not aside, 
threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce suffocation ? ' 



CHAPTER IV 

HELOTAGE 

Heuschrecke's Malthusian Tract, and Teufelsdrockh's marginal notes 
thereon. The true workman, for daily bread, or spiritual bread, to be 
honoured ; and no other. The real privation of the Poor not poverty or 
toil, but ignorance. Over-population : With a world like ours and wide as 
ours, can there be too many men ? Emigration. 

At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather 
reverting, to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled 
Institute Jbr the Repression of Population; which lies, dishonour- 
ably enough (with torn leaves, and a preceptible smell of 
aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag Pisces. Not indeed for 
the sake of the Tract itself, which we admire little ; but of 
the marginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand, which 
rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their 
right place here. 

Into the Hofrath's Institute, with its extraordinary schemes, 
and machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall 
not so much as glance. Enough for us to understand that 
Heuschrecke is a disciple of Malthus ; and so zealous for the 
doctrine, that his zeal almost literally eats him up. A deadly 

* That of Georee iv. — Ed. 



CHAP. IV.] HELOTAGE 181 

fear of Population possesses the Hofrath ; something like a 
fixed-idea ; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of 
Madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is 
there light ; nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger ; open 
mouths opening wider and wider ; a world to terminate by 
the frightfullest consummation : by its too dense inhabitants, 
famished into delirium, universally eating one another. To 
make air for himself in which strangulation, choking enough to 
a benevolent heart, the Hofrath founds, or proposes to found, 
this Institute of his, as the best he can do. It is only with our 
Professor''s comments thereon that we concern ourselves. 

First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a speculative 
Radical, has his own notions about human dignity ; that the 
Zahdarm palaces and courtesies have not made him forgetful 
of the Futteral cottages. On the blank cover of Heusch- 
recke's Tract we find the following indistinctly engrossed : 

*Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toilworn 
Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously con- 
quers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to me is 
the hard Hand ; crooked, coarse ; wherein notwithstanding 
lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of 
this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather- 
tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence ; for it is the face 
of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy 
rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee ! 
Hardly-entreated Brother ! For us was thy back so bent, for 
us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed : thou 
wert OTU* Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our 
battles wert so marred. . For in thee too lay a god-created 
Form, but it was not to be unfolded ; encrusted must it stand 
with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labour : and thy 
body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. ) Yet toil on, 
toil on : thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may ; thou 
toilest for the. altogether indispensable, for daily bread, i 

' A second man I honour, and still more highly : Him 
who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable ; not daily 



182 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

bread, but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty ; 
endeavouring towards inward Harmony ; revealing this, by act 
or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high 
or low ? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward 
endeavour are one : when we can name him Artist ; not 
earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with 
heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us ! If the 
poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high 
and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have 
Guidance, Freedom, Immortality? — ^These two, in all their 
degrees, I honour : / all else is chaff and dust, which let the 
wind blow whither it listeth. 

'Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both 
dignities united ; \ and he that must toil outwardly for the 
lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. 
Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, 
could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take 
thee back to Nazareth itself ; thou wilt see the splendour of 
Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like 
a light shining in great darkness.' 

And again : * It is not because of his toils that I lament 
for the poor : we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name 
our stealing), which is worse ; fno faithful workman finds his 
task a pastime. The poor is hungry and athirst ; but for 
him also there is food and drink : he is heavy-laden and 
weary ; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the 
deepest ; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest 
envelops him, and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted Dreams. 
But what I do mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul should 
go out ; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly know- 
ledge, should visit him ; but only, in the haggard darkness, 
like two spectres. Fear and Indignation bear him company. 
Alas, while the body stands so broad and brawny, must 
the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated ! 
Alas, was this too a Breath of God ; bestowed in Heaven, 
but on earth never to be unfolded ! — ^That there should one 



CHAP. IV.] HELOTAGE 183 

Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call 
a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the 
minute; as by some computations it does. The miserable 
fraction of Science which our united Mankind, in a wide 
Universe of Nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all 
diligence, imparted to all ? ' 

Quite in an opposite strain is the following : ' The old 
Spartans had a wiser method ; and went out and hunted- 
down their Helots, and speared and spitted them, when they 
grew too numerous. With our improved fashions of hunting, 
Herr Hofrath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and 
standing-armies, how much easier were such a hunt ! Perhaps 
in the most thickly-peopled country, some three days annually 
might suffice to shoot all the able-bodied Paupers that had 
accumulated within the year. Let Governments think of this. 
The expense were trifling : nay the very carcasses would pay it. 
Have them salted and barrelled - could not you victual there- 
with, if not Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm Paupers, 
in workhouses and elsewhere, as enlightened Charity, dreading 
no evil of them, might see good to keep alive ? ' 

' And yet,' writes he farther on, ' there must be something 
wrong. A full-formed Horse will, in any market, bring from 
twenty to as high as two-hundred Friedrichs d'or : such is his 
worth to the world. A full-formed Man is not only worth 
nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a round 
sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. Never- 
theless, which of the two was the more cunningly-devised 
article, even as an Engine ? Good Heavens ! A white 
European Man, standing on his two Legs, with his two five- 
fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his 
shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a hundred Horses' ! 

' True, thou Gold-Hofrath,' cries the Professor elsewhere : 
* too crowded indeed ! Meanwhile, what portion of this incon- 
siderable terraqueous Globe have ye actually tilled and delved, 
till it will grow no more ? How thick stands your Population 
in the Pampas and Savannas of America ; round ancient Car- 



184 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

thage, and in the interior of Africa ; on both slopes of the 
Altaic chain, in the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, 
Greece, Turkey, Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare ? One 
man, in one year, as I have understood it, if you lend him 
Earth, will feed himself and nine others. Alas, where now 
are the Hengsts and Alarics of our still-glowing, still-expand- 
ing Europe ; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will 
enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous 
masses of indomitable living Valour ; equipped, not now with 
the battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the steam-engine and 
ploughshare ? Where are they ? — Preserving their Game ! ' 



CHAPTER V 

THE PHCENIX 

Teufelsdrockh considers Society &fdead ; its soul (Religion) gone, its body 
(existing Institutions) going. Utilitarianism, needing little farther preach- 
ing, is now in full activity of destruction. — Teufelsdrockh woidd yield to the 
Inevitable, accounting that the best : Assurance of a fairer Living Society, 
arising, Phcenix-like, out of the ruins of the old dead one. Before that 
Phoenix death-birth is accomplished, long time, struggle, and suffering 
must intervene. 

Putting which four singular Chapters together, and alongside 
of them numerous hints, and even direct utterances, scattered 
over these Writings of his, we come upon the startling yet not 
quite unlooked-for conclusion, that Teufelsdrockh is one of 
those who consider Society, properly so called, to be as good 
as extinct ; and that only the gregarious feelings, and old in- 
herited habitudes, at this juncture, hold us from Dispersion, 
and universal national, civil, domestic and personal war ! He 
says expressly : * For the last three centuries, above all for the 
last * three quarters of a century, that same Pericardial Nervous 
Tissue (as we named it) of Religion, where lies the Life-essence 
of Society, has been smote-at and perforated, needfully and 
needlessly ; till now it is quite rent into shreds ; and Society, 
long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct ; 



CHAP, v.] THE PHCENIX 185 

for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life ; neither 
indeed will they endure, galvanise as you may, beyond two 
days.' 

' Call ye that a Society,' cries he again, ' where there is no 
longer any Social Idea extant ; not so much as the Idea of a 
common Home, but only of a common over-crowded Lodging- 
house ? Where each, isolated, regardless of his neighboiu", 
turned against his neighbour, clutches what he can get, and 
cries " Mine ! " and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse 
and cut-throat Scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cun- 
ninger sort, can be employed ? Where Friendship, Communion, 
has become an incredible tradition ; and your holiest Sacra- 
mental Supper is a smoking Tavern Dinner, with Cook for 
Evangelist ? Where your Priest has no tongue but for plate- 
licking : and your high Guides and Governors cannot guide ; 
but on all hands hear it passionately proclaimed : Laissez 
faire ; Leave us alone of yawr guidance, such light is darker 
than darkness ; eat you your wages, and sleep ! 

*Thus, too,' continues he, 'does an observant eye discern 
everywhere that saddest spectacle : The Poor perishing, like 
neglected, foundered Draught- Cattle, of Hunger and Over- 
work ; the Rich, still more wretchedly, of Idleness, Satiety, 
and Over-growth. The Highest in rank, at length, without 
honour from the Lowest ; scarcely, with a little mouth-honour, 
as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once- 
sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men 
grudge even the expense ; a World becoming dismantled : in 
one word, the Church fallen speechless, from obesity and 
apoplexy ; the State shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened 
to get its pay ! ' 

We might ask, are there many 'observant eyes,' belonging 
to practical men in England or elsewhere, which have descried 
these phenomena ; or is it only from the mystic elevation of a 
German Wahngasse that such wonders are visible .? Teufels- 
drockh contends that the aspect of a ' deceased or expiring 
Society ' fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may read. 



186 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK ill. 

* What, for example,' says he, * is the universally-arrogated 
Virtue, almost the sole remaining Catholic Virtue, of these 
days ? For some half century, it has been the thing you name 
" Independence." Suspicion of " Servility," of reverence for 
Superiors, the very dogleech is anxious to disavow. Fools ! 
Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to 
obey, reverence for them were even your only possible free- 
dom. Independence, in all kinds, is rebellion ; if unjust 
rebellion, why parade it, and everywhere prescribe it ? ' 

But what then ? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to 
the state of Nature ? ' The Soul Politic having departed,' says 
Teufelsdrockh, ' what can follow but that the Body Politic be 
decently interred, to avoid putrescence ? Liberals, Econo- 
mists, Utilitarians enough I see marching with its bier, and 
chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral-pile, where, amid 
wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, 
the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that 
these men. Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, 
will ultimately carry their point, and dissever and destroy most 
existing Institutions of Society, seems a thing which has some 
time ago ceased to be doubtful. 

* Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian 
Armament come to light even in insulated England ? A living 
nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there 
also ; and under curious phasis ; properly as the inconsiderable 
fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself 
the van. Our European Mechanisers are a sect of boundless 
diffusion, activity, and cooperative spirit : has not Utilitarian- 
ism flourished in high places of Thought, here among our- 
selves, and in every European country, at some time or other, 
within the last fifty years ? K now in all countries, except 
perhaps England, it has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, 
among Thinkers, and sunk to Journalists and the popular 
mass, — who sees not that, as hereby it no longer preaches, 
so the reason is, it now needs no Preaching, but is in full 
universal Action, ,the doctrine everywhere known, and enthu- 



CHAP, v.] THE PH(ENIX 187 

siastically laid to heart ? The fit pabulum, in these times, 
for a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise 
without their corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, 
it requires but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes 
enough. — ^Admirably calculated for destroying, only not for 
rebuilding ! It spreads like a sort of Dog-madness ; till the 
whole World-kennel will be rabid : then woe to the Huntsmen, 
with or without their whips ! They should have given the 
quadrupeds water,' adds he ; ' the water, namely, of Know- 
ledge and of Life, while it was yet time.' 

Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we are 
at this hour in a most critical condition ; beleaguered by that 
boundless ' Armament of Mechanisers ' and Unbelievers, threat- 
ening to strip us bare ! ' The World,' says he, * as it needs 
must, is under a process of devastation and waste, which, 
whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker com- 
bustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate 
the past Forms of Society ; replace them with what it may. 
For the present, it is contemplated that when man's whole 
Spiritual Interests are once divested, these innumerable stript- 
off Garments shall mostly be bm-nt ; but the sounder Rags 
among them be quilted together into one huge Irish watch- 
coat for the defence of the Body only ! ' — ^This, we think, is 
but Job's-news to the humane reader. 

* Nevertheless,' cries Teufelsdrockh, * who can hinder it ; 
who is there that can clutch into the wheelspokes of Destiny, 
and say to the Spirit of the Time : Turn back, I command 
thee ? — ^Wiser were it that we yielded to the Inevitable and 
Inexorable, and accounted even this the best.' 

Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own infer- 
ences from what stands written, conjecture that Teufelsdrockh 
individually had yielded to this same * Inevitable and Inexor- 
able ' heartily enough ; and now sat waiting the issue, with his 
natural diabolico-angelical Indifference, if not even Placidity.'* 
Did we not hear him complain that the World was a ' huge 
Ragfair,' and the * rags and tatters of old Symbols' were rain- 



188 SARTOR RESARTUS [book iii. 

ing-down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him ? 
What with those ' unhunted Helots ' of his ; and the uneven 
sic vos nan vobis pressure and hard-crashing collision he is 
pleased to discern in existing things ; what with the so hate- 
ful ' empty Masks,' full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring out 
on him, from their glass eyes, * with a ghastly affectation of 
life,"" — we feel entitled to conclude him even willing that 
much should be thrown to the Devil, so it were but done 
gently ! Safe himself in that ' Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo,' he 
would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster 
Utilitaria, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, 
halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of 
rope, should go forth to do her work ; — to tread down old 
ruinous Palaces and Temples with her broad hoof, till the 
whole were trodden down, that new and better might be 
built ! Remarkable in this point of view are the following 
sentences. 

' Society,' says he, ' is not dead : that Carcass, which you 
call dead Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled- 
off, to assume a nobler ; she herself, through perpetual meta- 
morphoses, in fairer and fairer development, has to live till 
Time also merge in Eternity. ,* Wheresoever two or three 
Living Men are gathered together, there is Society;; or there 
it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous struc- 
tures, overspreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards 
to Heaven and downwards to Gehenna : for always, under 
one or the other figure, it has two authentic Revelations, of a 
God and of a Devil ; the Pulpit, namely, and the Gallows.' 

Indeed, we already heard him speak of ' Religion, in un- 
noticed nooks, weaving for herself new Vestures ' ; — ^Teufels- 
drockh himself being one of the loom-treadles ? Elsewhere he 
quotes without censure that strange aphorism of Saint-Simon's, 
concerning which and whom so much were to be said : ' Vage 
d'or, qiCune aveugle tradition a place Jusqu'ici dans le passe, est 
devant nous ; The golden age, which a blind tradition has 
hitherto placed in the Past, is Before us.'\ — But listen again : 



CHAP, v.] THE PHCENIX 189 

* When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there 
not be sparks flying ! Alas, some millions of men, and among 
them such as a Napoleon, have already been licked into that 
high-eddying Flame, and like moths consumed there. Still 
also have we to fear that incautious beards will get singed. 

' For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-crema- 
tion will be completed, you need not ask. The law of Perse- 
verance is among the deepest in man : by nature he hates 
change ; seldom will he quit his old house till it has actually 
fallen about his ears. Thus have I seen Solemnities linger as 
Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent of 
three-hundred years and more after all life and sacredness had 
evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time the 
Phoenix Death-Birth itself will require, depends on unseen 
contingencies. — ^Meanwhile, would Destiny offer Mankind, that 
after, say two centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more 
or less vivid, the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we 
to find ourselves again in a Living Society, and no longer 
fighting but working, — ^were it not perhaps prudent in Man- 
kind to strike the bargain ? ' 

Thus is Teufelsdrockh content that old sick Society should 
be deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel than spice- 
wood) ; in the faith that she is a Phoenix ; and that a new 
heavenborn young one will rise out of her ashes ! We our- 
selves, restricted to the duty of Indicator, shall forbear com- 
mentary. Meanwhile, will not the judicious reader shake his 
head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, 
say or think : From a Doctor utriusque Juris, titular Professor 
in a University, and man to whom hitherto, for his services. 
Society, bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of 
a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more 
gratitude to his benefactress ; and less of a blind trust in the 
future, which resembles that rather of a philosophical Fatalist 
and Enthusiast, than of a solid householder paying scot-and- 
lot in a Christian country. 



190 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 



CHAPTER VI 
OLD CLOTHES 

Courtesy due from all men to all men : The Body of Man a Revelation in 
the Flesh. Teufelsdrockh's respect for Old Clothes, as the 'Ghosts of life.' 
Walk in Monmouth Street, and meditations there. 

As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a sansculottist, 
is in practice probably the politest man extant : his whole 
heart and life are penetrated and informed with the spirit of 
politeness; a noble natural Courtesy shines through him, 
beautifying his vagaries ; like sun-light, making a rosy- 
fingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds ; 
nay brightening London-smoke itself into gold vapour, as 
from the crucible of an alchemist. Hear in what earnest 
though fantastic wise he expresses himself on this head : 

'Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the, 
rich ? In Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from High- 1 
breeding, only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, 1 
rather than gracefully insists on its own rights, I discern no 1 
special connexion with wealth or birth : but rather that it lies 
in human nature itself, and is due from all men towards all 1 
men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster at his post, and/ 
worth anything when there, this, with so much else, would be 
reformed. Nay, each man were then also his neighbour's 
schoolmaster ; till at length a rude-visaged, unmannered 
Peasant could no more be met with, than a Peasant unac- 
quainted with botanical Physiology, or who felt not that the 
clod he broke was created in Heaven. 

' For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, art 
not thou ALIVE ; is not this thy brother alive ? " There is 
but one temple in the world," says Novalis, " and that temple 
is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high Form. 
Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in 



CHAP. VI.] OLD CLOTHES 191 

the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a 
human Body." ' 

* On which ground, I would fam carry it farther than most 
do ; and whereas the English Johnson only bowed to every 
Clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, I would bow to every 
Man with any sort of hat, or with no hat whatever. Is not 
he a Temple, then ; the visible Manifestation and Impersona- 
tion of the Divinity.? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate 
bowing serves not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as 
well as a Divinity ; and too often the bow is but pocketed 
by the forTner. It would go to the pocket of Vanity (which 
is your clearest phasis of the Devil, in these times) ; therefore 
must we withhold it. 

* The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to 
those Shells and outer Husks of the Body, wherein no 
devilish passion any longer lodges, but only the pure emblem 
and effigies of Man : I mean, to Empty, or even to Cast 
Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that most men do 
reverence : to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the 
" straddling animal with bandy legs " which it holds, and 
makes a Dignitary of? Who ever saw any Lord my-lorded 
in tattered blanket fastened with wooden skewer ? Neverthe- 
less, I say, there is in such worship a shade of hypocrisy, a 
practical deception : for how often does the Body appropriate 
what was meant for the Cloth only ! Whoso would avoid 
falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps see 
good to take a different course. That reverence which can- 
not act without obstruction and perversion when the Clothes 
are full, may have free course when they are empty. Even as, 
for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagoda is not less sacred than 
the God ; so do I too worship the hollow cloth Garment with 
equal fervour, as when it contained the Man : nay, with more, 
for I now fear no deception, of myself or of others. 

*Did not King Toomtabard, or, in other words, John 
Baliol, reign long over Scotland ; the man John Baliol being 
quite gone, and only the "Toom Tabard" (Empty Gown) 



192 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

remaining? What still dignity dwells in a suit of Cast 
Clothes ! How meekly it bears its honours ! No haughty 
looks, no scornful gesture : silent and serene, it fronts the 
world ; neither demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. 
The Hat still carries the physiognomy of its Head : but the 
vanity and the stupidity, and goose-speech which was the 
sign of these two, are gone. The Coat-arm is stretched out, 
but not to strike ; the Breeches, in modest simplicity, depend 
at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow ; the Waistcoat 
hides no evil passion, no riotous desire ; hunger or thirst now 
dwells not in it. Thus all is purged from the grossness of 
sense, from the carking cares and foul vices of the World ; 
and rides there, on its Clothes-horse ; as, on a Pegasus, might 
some skyey Messenger, or purified Apparition, visiting our 
low Earth. 

* Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of 
Civilised Life, the Capital of England ; and meditated, and 
questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea of vapouf , black, thick, 
and multifarious as Spartan broth ; and was one lone soul 
amid those grinding millions ; — often have I turned into their 
Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart I 
walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as 
through a Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, 
but expressive in their silence : the past witnesses and instru- 
ments of Woe and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all 
the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in " the Prison men 
call Life." Friends ! trust not the heart of that man for 
whom Old Clothes are not venerable. Watch, too, with 
reverence, that bearded Jewish High-priest, who with hoarse 
voice, like some Angel of Doom, summons them from the four 
winds ! On his head, like the Pope, he has three Hats, — a 
real triple tiara ; on either hand are the similitude of wings, 
whereon the summoned Garments come to alight ; and ever, 
as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, 
as if through a trumpet he were proclaiming : " Ghosts of 
Life, come to Judgment ! " Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts : 



CHAP. VI.] OLD CLOTHES 193 

he will purify you in his Purgatory, with fire and with 
water; and, one day, new-created ye shall reappear. O, let 
him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready to go out, who 
has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace 
and repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of Mon- 
mouth Street, and say whether his heart and his eyes still 
continue dry. If Field Lane, with its long fluttering rows of 
yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius"" Ear, where, in stifled 
jarring hubbub, we hear the Lidictment which Poverty and 
Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there 
cast-out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness and the 
Devil, — then is Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in 
motley vision, the whole Pageant of Existence passes awfully 
before us ; with its wail and jubilee, mad loves and mad 
hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, farce-tragedy, beast- 
godhood, — the Bedlam of Creation ! ' 

To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem 
overcharged. We too have walked through Monmouth Street; 
but with little feeling of 'Devotion': probably in part because 
the contemplative process is so fatally broken in upon by the 
brood of money-changers who nestle in that Church, and impor- 
tune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. Whereas 
Teufelsdrockh might be in that happy middle state, which 
leaves to the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of 
purchase, and so be allowed to linger there without molesta- 
tion. — Something we would have given to see the little philo- 
sophical figure, with its steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, 
and eyes in a fine frenzy, ' pacing and repacing in austerest 
thought' that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphic 
avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the 'Ghosts 
of Life ' rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philo- 
sophic Teufelsdrockh, that listenest while others only gabble, 
and with thy quick tympanxun hearest the grass grow ! 

At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag 
Documents destined for an English work, there exists nothing 



194 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in London ; and of 
his Meditations among the Clothes-shops only the obscurest 
emblematic shadows ? Neither, in conversation (for, indeed, he 
was not a man to pester you with his Travels), have we heard 
him more than allude to the subject. 

For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we 
here find how early the significance of Clothes had dawned on 
the now so distinguished Clothes-Professor. Might we but 
fancy it to have been even in Monmouth Street, at the bottom 
of our own English * ink-sea,' that this remarkable Volume 
first took being, and shot forth its salient point in his soul, — 
as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into 
a Universe ! 



CHAPTER VII 
ORGANIC FILAMENTS 

Destruction and Creation ever proceed together ; and organic filaments of 
the Future are even now spinning. Wonderful connection of each man 
with all men; and of each generation with all generations, before and 
after : Mankind is One. Sequence and progress of all human work, whether 
of creation or destruction, from age to age. — Titles, hitherto derived from 
Fighting, must give way to others. Kings will remain and their title. 
Political Freedom, not to be attained by any mechanical contrivance. 
Hero-worship, perennial amongst men ; the cornerstone of polities in the 
Future. Organic filaments of the New Religion : Newspapers and Litera- 
ture. Let the faithful soul take courage ! 

For us, who happen to live while the W^orld-Phoenix is 
burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as Teufelsdrockh 
calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she engage to 
have done ' within two centuries,' there seems to lie but an 
ashy prospect. Not altogether so, however, does the Pro- 
fessor figure it. ' In the living subject,' says he, ' change is 
wont to be gradual : thus, while the serpent sheds its old 
skin, the new is already formed beneath. Little knowest 
thou of the bimning of a World-Phoenix, who fanciest that 
she must first burn-out, and lie as a dead cinereous heap ; and 



CHAP. VII.] ORGANIC FILAMENTS 195 

thjSrefrom the young one start-up by miracle, and fly heaven- 
ward. Far otherwise ! In that Fire- whirlwind, Creation and 
Destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the Old 
are blown about, do organic filaments of the New mysteriously 
spin themselves : and amid the rushing and the waving of the 
Whirlwind-element come tones of a melodious Deathsong, 
which end not but in tones of a more melodious Birthsong. 
Nay, look into the Fire- whirl wind with thy own eyes, and 
thou wilt see.' Let us actually look, then : to poor indi- 
viduals, who cannot expect to live two centuries, those same 
organic filaments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will be 
the best part of the spectacle. First, therefore, this of Man- 
kind in general : 

' In vain thou deniest it,' says the Professor ; * thou art my 
Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish Lies 
thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humour : what is all this 
but an inverted Sympathy ? Were I a Steam-engine, wouldst 
thou take the trouble to tell lies of me ? Not thou ! I should 
grind all unheeded, whether badly or well. 

' Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all ; 
whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of 
Necessity, as we like to choose it. More than once have I 
said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting Figure, 
such as provokes whimsical thoughts : " Wert thou, my little 
Brotherkin, suddenly covered-up within the largest imaginable 
Glass-bell, — what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for 
the world ! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four 
winds, impinge against thy Glass walls, but have to drop 
unread : neither from within comes there question or response 
into any Postbag ; thy Thoughts fall into no friendly ear or 
heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing hand : thou art no 
longer a circulating venous-arterial Heart, that, taking and 
giving, circulatest through all Space and all Time : there has 
a Hole fallen-out in the immeasurable, universal World-tissue, 
which must be damed-up again !" 

' Such venous-arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal Mes- 



196 SARTOR RESARTUS [book iii. 

sages, paper and other Packages, going out from him ^nd 
coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to the eye : but the 
finer nervous circulation, by which all things, the minutest 
that he does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of 
his face blesses or ciu-ses whomso it lights on, and so generates 
ever new blessing or new cursing : all this you cannot see, but 
only imagine. I say, there is not a red Indian, hunting by 
Lake Winnipic, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole 
world must smart for it : will not the price of beaver rise ? 
It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from 
my hand alters the centre of gravity of the Universe. 

*If now an existing generation of men stand so woven 
together, not less indissolubly does generation with generation. 
Hast thou ever meditated on that word. Tradition : how we 
inherit not Life only, but all the garniture and form of Life ; ' 
and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our Fathers, 
and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it 
us ? — ^Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending 
Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes ? Not the Herren 
Stillschweigen and Company ; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust 
of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. 
Had there been no Mcesogothic Ulfila, there had been no 
English Shakspeare, or a different one. Simpleton ! it was 
Tubalcain that made thy very Tailor's needle, and sewed that 
court-suit of thine. 

* Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, 
much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects and creates 
Nature, without which Nature were not. As palpable life- 
streams in that wondrous Individual Mankind, among so many 
life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those main-currents 
of what we call Opinion ; as preserved in Institutions, Polities, 
Churches, above all in Books. Beautiful it is to understand 
and know that a Thought did never yet die ; that as thou, the 
originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the 
whole Past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole Future. < It 
is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, 



CHAP. VII.] ORGANIC FILAMENTS 197 

still feels and sees in us of the latest ; that the Wise Man 
stands ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud 
of witnesses and brothers ; and there is a living, literal Com- 
munion of Saints, wide as the World itself, and as the His- 
tory of the World. 

' Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this 
same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into Genera- 
tions. Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind :' 
Death and Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that 
summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new 
advancement. What the Father has made, the Son can make 
and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. 
Thus all things wax, and roll onwards ; Arts, Establishments, 
Opinions, nothing is completed, but ever completing. Newton 
has learned to see what Kepler saw ; but there is also a fresh 
heaven-derived force in Newton ; he must mount to still 
higher points of vision. So too the Hebrew Lawgiver is, in 
due time, followed by an Apostle of the Gentiles. In the 
business of Destruction, as this also is from time to time a 
necessary work, thou findest a like sequence and perseverance : 
for Luther it was as yet hot enough to stand by that burning 
of the Pope's Bull ; Voltaire could not warm himself at the 
glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel. Thus like- 
wise, I note, the English Whig has, in the second generation, 
become an English Radical ; who, in the third again, it is to 
be hoped, will become an English Rebuilder. Find Mankind 
where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in 
progress faster or slower ; the Phoenix soars aloft, hovers with 
outstretched wings, filling Earth with her music ; or, as now, 
she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in 
flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer.' 

Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, 
lay this to heart, and derive from it any little comfort they 
can. We subjoin another passage, concerning Titles : 

' Remark, not without surprise,' says Teufelsdrockh, * ho v 
all high Titles of Honour come hitherto from Fighting. Your 



198 SARTOR RESARTUS [book iii. 

Herzog (Duke, Dux) is Leader of Armies ; your Earl {JarT) 
is Strong Man ; your Marshal cavalry Horse-shoer. A 
Millennium, or reign of Peace and Wisdom, having from of 
old been prophesied, and becoming now daily more and more 
indubitable, may it not be apprehended that such Fighting- 
titles will cease to be palatable, and new and higher need to 
be devised ? 

* The only Title wherein I, with confidence, trace eternity, 
is that of King. Konig (King), anciently Kbnning, means 
Ken-ning (Cunning), or which is the same thing, Can-ning. 
Ever must the Sovereign of Mankind be fitly entitled King." 

*Well, also,' says he elsewhere, 'was it written by Theo- 
logians : a King rules by divine right. He carries in him an 
authority from God, or man will never give it him. Can I 
choose my own King ? I can choose my own King Popinjay, 
and play what farce or tragedy I may with him : but he who 
is to be my Ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, 
was chosen for me in Heaven. Neither except in such 
Obedience to the Heaven-chosen is Freedom so much as con- 
ceivable.' 

The Editor will here admit that, among all the wondrous 
provinces of Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, there is none he 
walks in with such astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, as 
in the Political. How, with our English love of Ministry 
and Opposition, and that generous conflict of Parties, mind 
warming itself against mind in their mutual wrestle for the 
Public Good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable Con- 
stitution kept warm and alive ; how shall we domesticate 
ourselves in this spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of 
the Dead and of the Unborn, where the Present seems little 
other than an inconsiderable Film dividing the Past and the 
Future? In those dim long-drawn expanses, all is so im- 
measurable ; much so disastrous, ghastly ; your very radiances 
and straggling light-beams have a supernatural character. 
And then with such an indifference, such a prophetic peaceful- 



CHAP. VII.] ORGANIC FILAMENTS 199 

ness (accounting the inevitably coming as already here, to him 
all one whether it be distant by centuries or only by days), 
does he sit ; — and live, you would say, rather in any other 
age than in his own ! It is our painful duty to announce, or 
repeat, that, looking into this man, we discern a deep, silent, 
slow-burning, inextinguishable Radicalism, such as fills us with 
shuddering admiration. 

Thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the 
Elective Franchise ; at least so we interpret the following : 
' Satisfy yourselves,' he says, * by universal, indubitable experi- 
ment, even as ye are now doing or will do, whether Freedom, 
heavenbom and leading heavenward, and so vitally essential 
for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically hatched and 
brought to light in that same Ballot-Box of yours ; or at worst, 
in some other discoverable or devisable Box, Edifice, or Steam- 
mechanism. It were a mighty convenience ; and beyond all 
feats of manufacture witnessed hitherto.' Is Teufelsdrockh 
acquainted with the British Constitution, even slightly ? — He 
says, imder another figure : ' But after all, were the problem, as 
indeed it now everywhere is. To rebuild your old House from 
the top downwards (since you must live in it the while), what 
better, what other, than the Representative Machine will serve 
your turn ? Meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name 
of Free, " when you have but knit-up my chains into orna- 
mental festoons." '- — Or what will any member of the Peace 
Society make of such an assertion as this : ' The lower people 
everywhere desire War. Not so unwisely ; there is then a 
demand for lower people — to be shot ! ' 

Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul-confusing 
labyrinths of speculative Radicalism, into somewhat clearer 
regions. Here, looking round, as was our best, for * organic 
filaments,' we ask. May not this, touching 'Hero-worship,' be of 
the number ? It seems of a cheerful character ; yet so quaint, 
so mystical, one knows not what, or how little, may lie under 
it. Our readei^ shall look with their own eyes : 

* True is it that, in these days, man can do almost all 



200 SARTOR RESARTUS [book iii. 

things, only hot obey. True likewise that whoso cannot obey 
cannot be free, still less bear rule ; he that is the inferior of 
nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal of nothing. 
Nevertheless, believe not that man has lost his faculty of 
Reverence ; that if it slumber in him, it has gone dead. Pain- 
ful for man is that same rebellious Independence, when it 
has become inevitable ; only in loving companionship with his 
fellows does he feel safe ; only in reverently bowing down 
before the Higher does he feel himself exalted. 

' Or what if the character of our so troublous Era lay even 
in this : that man had forever cast away Fear, which is the 
lower ; but not yet risen into perennial Reverence, which is 
the higher and highest ? 

' Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has Nature 
ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but 
obey. Before no faintest revelation of the Godlike did he 
ever stand irreverent ; least of all, when the Godlike showed 
itself revealed in his fellow-man. Thus is there a true religious 
Loyalty forever rooted in his heart ; nay in all ages, even in 
ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox Hero-wor- 
ship. In which fact, that Hero-worship exists, has existed, 
and will forever exist, universally among Mankind, mayest thou 
discern the corner-stone of living-rock, whereon all Polities for 
the remotest time may stand secure.' 

Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so 
much as what Teufelsdrockh is looking at ? He exclaims, * Or 
hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire ? How the aged, withered 
man, though but a Sceptic, Mocker, and millinery Court-poet, 
yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag man- 
kind at his chariot- wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from 
him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair 
beneath his feet ! All Paris was one vast Temple of Hero- 
worship ; though their Divinity, moreover, was of feature too 
apish. 

* But if such things,' continues he, ' were done in the dry 
tree, what will be done in the green ? If, in the most parched 



CHAP. VII.] ORGANIC FILAMENTS 201 

season of Man's History, in the most parched spot of Europe, 
when Parisian life was at best but a scientific Hortus Siccus, 
bedizened with some Italian Gumflowers, such virtue could 
come out of it; what is to be looked for when Life again 
waves leafy and bloomy, and your Hero-Divinity shall have 
nothing apelike, but be wholly hmnan ? Know that there is 
in man a quite indestructible Reverence for whatsoever holds 
of Heaven, or even plausibly counterfeits such holding. Show 
the dullest clodpole, show the haughtiest featherhead, that 
a soul higher than himself is actually here ; were his knees 
stiffened into brass, he must down and worship.' 

Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously 
spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in the follow- 
ing passage : 

* There is no Chm-ch, sayest thou ? The voice of Prophecy 
has gone dumb ? This is even what I dispute : but in any 
case, hast thou not still Preaching enough ? A Preaching Friar 
settles himself in every village ; and builds a pulpit, which he 
calls Newspaper. Therefrom he preaches what most moment- 
ous doctrine is in him, for man's salvation ; and dost not thou 
listen, and believe ? Look well, thou seest everywhere a new 
Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some bare-footed, some almost 
bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, 
zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of God. These 
break in pieces the ancient idols ; and, though themselves too 
often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the 
sites of new Churches, where the true God-ordained, that are 
to follow, may find audience, and minister. Said I not, Before 
the old skin was shed, the new had formed itself beneath it ? ' 

Perhaps also in the following ; wherewith we now hasten to 
knit-up this ravelled sleeve : 

* But there is no Religion ? ' reiterates the Professor. ' Fool ! 
I tell thee, there is. Hast thou well considered all that lies 
in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name Literature ? Frag- 
ments of a genuine Ch.wcc}i-Homiletic lie scattered there, which 
Time will assort : nay fractions even of a Liturgy could I 



202 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

point out. And knowest thou no Prophet, even in the ves- 
ture, environment, and dialect of this age ? None to whom 
the Godlike had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest 
forms of the Common ; and by him been again prophetically 
revealed : in whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gather- 
ing and rag-burning days, Man"'s Life again begins, were it but 
afar off, to be divine ? Knowest thou none such ? I know 
him, and name him — Goethe. 

* But thou as yet standest in no Temple ; joinest in no 
Psalm- worship ; feelest well that, where there is no minister- 
ing Priest, the people perish ? Be of comfort ! Thou art 
not alone, if thou have Faith. Spake we not of a Communion 
of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying and brother- 
like embracing thee, so thou be worthy ? Their heroic Suffer- 
ings rise up melodiously together to Heaven, out of all lands, 
and out of all times, as a sacred Miserere ; their heroic Actions 
also, as a boundless everlasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither 
say that thou hast now no Symbol of the Godlike. Is not 
God's Universe a Symbol of the Godlike ; is not Immensity a 
Temple ; is not Man's History, and Men's History, a per- 
petual Evangel ? Listen, and for organ-music thou wilt ever, 
as of old, hear the Morning Stars sing together.' 



CHAPTER VIII 
NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 

Deep significance of Miracles. Littleness of human Science: Divine in- 
comprehensibility of Nature. Custom blinds ua to the miraculousness of 
daily-recurring miracles; so do Names. Space and Time, appearances 
only ; forms of human Thought : A glimpse of Immortality. How Space 
hides froiii us the wondrousness of our commonest powers ; and Time, the 
divinely miraculous course of human history. 

It is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Super- 
naturalism, that the Professor first becomes a Seer ; and, after 
long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his 



CHAP. VIIL] NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 203 

feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious pos- *■ 
session thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with ; 
' Cloth- webs and Cob-webs/ of Imperial Mantles, Superannu- 
ated Symbols, and what not : yet still did he courageously 
pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, 
world-embracing Phantasms, Time and Space, have ever 
hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering : but with 
these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously 
rends asunder. In a word, he has looked fixedly on Existence, 
till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have 
all melted away ; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior 
celestial Holy of Holies lies disclosed. 

Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes 
attains to Transcendentalism ; this last leap, can we but clear 
it, takes us safe into the promised land, where Palingenesia, in 
all senses, may be considered as beginning. ' Courage, then ! ' 
may our Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes 
the First once did. This stupendous Section we, after long 
painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible ; but, on 
the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. 
Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative 
intellect is in him, do his part ; as we, by judicious selection 
and adjustment, shall study to do ours : 

'Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles,' thus 
quietly begins the Professor ; * far deeper perhaps than we 
imagine. Meanwhile, the question of questions were : What 
specially is a Miracle ? To that Dutch King of Siam, an 
icicle had been a miracle ; whoso had carried with him an 
air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a 
miracle. To my Horse, again, who imhappily is still more 
unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and magical " Open 
sesame ! " every time I please to pay twopence, and open for 
him an impassable Schlagbaum,, or shut Turnpike ? 

' " But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws 
of Nature?" ask several. Whom I answer by this new 
question : Where are the Laws of Nature ? To me perhaps 



204 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

the rising of one from the dead were no violation of these 
Laws, but a confirmation ; were some far deeper Law, now 
first penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest 
have all been, brought to bear on us with its Material Force. 

' Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment : 
On what ground shall one, that can make Iron swim, come 
and declare that therefore he can teach Religion? To us, 
truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such declaration were inept 
enough ; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the First 
Century, was full of meaning. 

i " But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be 
constant ?1 cries an illuminated class : " Is not the Machine of 
the Universe fixed to move by unalterable rules ? "" ; Probable 
enough, good friends : nay I, too, must believe that the God, 
whom ancient inspired men assert to be "without variable- 
ness or shadow of turning," does indeed never change ; that 
Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases 
can be prevented from calling a Machine, does move by the 
most unalterable rules. And now of you, too, I make the 
old inquiry : What those same unalterable rules, forming the 
complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be ? 

' They stand Avritten in our Works of Science, say you ; 
in the accumulated records of Man's Experience ? — Was Man 
with his Experience present at the Creation, then, to see how 
it all went on ? Have any deepest scientific individuals yet 
dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and gauged 
everything there ? Did the Maker take them into His coun- 
sel ; that they read His groundplan of the incomprehensible 
All ; and can say. This stands marked therein, and no more 
than this ? Alas, not in an3rwise ! These scientific individuals 
have been nowhere but where we also are ; have seen some 
handbreadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is infinite, 
without bottom as without shore. 

'Laplace's Book on the Stars, vherein he exhibits that 
certain Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy 
Sun, at a rate and in a course, which, by greatest good 



CHAP.Vlii.J NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 205 

fortune, he and the like of him have succeeded in detecting, 
— ^is to me as precious as to another. But is this what thou 
namest "Mechanism of the Heavens," and "System of the 
World " ; this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all 
Herschel's Fifteen-thousand Suns per minute, being left out, 
some paltry handful of Moons, and inert Balls, had been — 
looked at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill ; 
so that we can now prate of their Whereabout ; their How, 
their Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless 
Inane ? 

* System of Nature ! ' To the wisest man, wide as is his 
vision. Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite 
expansion ; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some 
few computed centuries and measured square-miles. The 
course of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a 
Planet, is partially known to us : but who knows what deeper 
courses these depend on ; what infinitely larger Cycle (of 
causes) our little Epicycle revolves on ? To the Minnow 
every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its 
little native Creek may have become familiar : but does the 
Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, 
the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses ; by 
all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and 
may, from time to time (wnmiraculously enough), be quite 
overset and reversed ? Such a minnow is Man ; his Creek 
this Planet Earth ; his Ocean the immeasurable All ; his 
Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of 
Providence through JEons of ^Eons. 

* We speak of the Volume of Nature : and truly a Volume 
it is, — whose Author and Writer is God. To read it ! Dost 
thou, does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? 
With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive Pages, 
poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, 
and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a 
Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred- 
writing ; of which even Prophets are happy that they can 



206 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

read here a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, 
and Academies of Science, they strive bravely; and, from 
amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic 
writing, pick out, by dextrous combination, some Letters in 
the vulgar Character, and therefrom put together this and 
the other economic Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That 
Nature is more than some boundless Volume of such Recipes, 
or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic- Cookery Book, of 
which the whole secret will in this manner one day evolve 
itself, the fewest dream. 

f Custom,' continues the Professor, ' doth make dotards of 
us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the 
greatest of Weavers ; and weaves air-raiment for all the 
Spirits of the Universe ; whereby indeed these dwell with us 
visibly, as ministering servants, in our houses and workshops ; 
but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, forever 
hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked 
us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even 
Believe by it ; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free- 
thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we 
have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy 
throughout but a continual battle against Custom ; an ever- 
renewed effort to transcend the sphere of blind Custom, and 
so become Transcendental ? 

' Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of 
Custom : but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack 
of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, 
ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live ; 
f for man must work as well as wonder : and herein is Custom 
so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she 
is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurse- 
lings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong 
the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with 
stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, or two- 
hundred, or two-million times .? There is no reason in Nature 



CHAP. VIIL] NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 207 

or in Art why I should : unless, indeed, I am a mere Work- 
Machine, for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other 
than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine ; a 
power whereby cotton might be spun, and money and money's 
worth realised. 

* Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the 
potency of Names ; which indeed are but one kind of such 
custom- woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, and all 
manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have now 
named Madness and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting 
that still the new question comes upon us : What is Mad- 
ness, what are Nerves ? Ever, as before, does Madness remain 
a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the 
Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of 
Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. 
Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it 
were formed within the bodily eye, or without it ? In every 
the wisest Soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an 
authentic Demon-Empire ; out of which, indeed, his world of 
Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, 
as on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery Earth-rind. 

' But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding 
Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand funda- 
mental world-enveloping Appearances, Space and Time. These, 
as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe 
our celestial Me for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, — ^lie 
all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, 
whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, 
weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, 
shall you endeavour to strip them off'; you can, at best, but 
rend them asunder for moments, and look through. 

' Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, 
and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was There. By 
this means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had 
annihilated Space ; for him there was no Where, but all was 



208 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse 
of Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, 
what a world we should have of it ! Still stranger, should, on 
the opposite side of the street, another Hatter establish him- 
self; and, as his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating 
Hats, make Time-annihilating ! Of both would I purchase, 
were it with my last groschen ; but chiefly of this latter. To 
clap-on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were Any- 
where, straightway to be There ! Next to clap-on your other 
felt, and, simply by wishing that you were Aaywhen, straight- 
way to be TTien ! This were indeed the grander : shooting 
at will from the Fire-Creation of the World to its Fire-Con- 
summation ; here historically present in the First Century, 
conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca; there pro- 
phetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with 
other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth 
of that late Time ! 

' Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable ? Is 
the Past annihilated, then, or only past ; is the Future non- 
extant, or only future ? Those mystic faculties of thine. 
Memory and Hope, already answer : already through those 
mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded summonest both Past 
and Future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, 
and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop 
down, the curtains of Tomorrow roll up ; but Yesterday and 
Tomorrow both are. Pierce through the Time-element, glance 
into the Eternal. Believe what thou findest written in the 
sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, 
have devoutly read it there : that Time and Space are not God, 
but creations of God; that with God as it is a universal Here, 
so is it an everlasting Now, 

vj * And seest thou therein any glimpse of Immoetality ? — O 
Heaven ! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, who died 
from our arms, and had to be left behind us there, which rises 
in the distance, like a pale, mournfully receding Milestone, to 
tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on 



CHAP. VIIL] NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 209 

alone, — ^but a pale spectral Illusion ! Is the lost Friend still 
mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with 
God ! — Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have 
perished, or are perishable ; that the real Being of whatever 
was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and for- 
ever. This, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder 
at thy leisure ; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty 
centuries : believe it thou must ; understand it thou canst not.ji 

* That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once 
for all, we are sent into this Earth to live, should condition 
and determine oiu: whole Practical reasonings, conceptions, and 
imagings or imaginings, seems altogether fit, just, and imavoid- 
able. But that they should, furthermore, usurp such sway 
over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind us to the wonder 
everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. AdiQit Space 
and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought ;t nay even, 
if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities : and con- 
sider, then, with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us 
the brightest God-efiiilgences ! Thus, were it not miraculous, 
could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the Sun ? Yet thou 
seest me daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many 
a thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art thou a grown 
baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of distance, or 
in pounds avoirdupois of weight ; and not to see that the true 
inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch 
forth my hand at all ; that I have free Force to clutch aught 
therewith ? Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, 
and wonder-hiding stupefactions, which Space practises on us. 

' Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti- 
magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. 
Had we but the Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, 
we should see ourselves in a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled 
or authentic Thaumaturgy, and feats of Magic, were outdone. 
But unhappily we have not such a Hat ; and man, poor fool 
that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without one. 

* Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or 

o 



210 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

Amphion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his 
Lyre ? Yet tell me, Who built these walls of Weissnichtwo ; 
summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to dance along from 
the Steinbruch (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with frightful 
green-mantled pools) ; and shape themselves into Doric and 
Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? Was 
it not the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past 
centuries, by the divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civil- 
ising Man ? Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea, eighteen- 
hundred years ago : his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native 
tones, took captive the ravished souls of men ; and, being of 
a true sphere-melody still flows and sounds, though now with 
thousandfold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through 
all our hearts ; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is 
that a wonder, which happens in two hours ; and does it cease 
to be wonderful if happening in two million ? Not only was 
Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus ; but without the 
music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no 
work that man glories in ever done. 

' Sweep away the Illusion of Time ; glance, if thou have 
eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far-distant Mover : 
The stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of 
elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had 
been struck, and sent flying? O, could I (with the Time- 
annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from the Beginnings 
to the Endings, how were thy eyesight imsealed, and thy heart 
set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder ! Then sawest 
thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province 
thereof, is in very deed the star-doomed City of God ; that 
through every star, through every grass-blade, and most 
through , every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still 
beams. But Natiure, which is the Time-vesture of God, and 
reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish. 

* Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual 
authentic Ghost ? The English Johnson longed, all his life, 
to see one ; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and 



CHAP. VIII.] NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 211 

thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish 
Doctor ! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with 
the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life 
he so loved ; did he never so much as look into Himself ? 
The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as 
heart could wish ; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travel- 
ling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away 
the illusion of Time ; compress the threescore years into three 
minutes : what else was he, what else are we ? Are we not 
Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance ; and 
that fade away again into air and Invisibility ? This is no 
metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact ; we start out of 
Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions ; round us, as 
round the veriest spectre, is Eternity ; and to Eternity 
minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not tones of Love 
and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of 
beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and jibber 
(in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminat- 
ings) ; and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful ; or uproar 
{poltern\ and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead, — till the 
scent of the morning air summons us to our still Home ; and 
dreamy Night becomes awake and Day ? Where now is 
Alexander of Macedon : does the steel Host, that yelled in 
fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him ; 
or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins 
must ? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Auster- 
litz Campaigns ! Was it all other than the veriest Spectre- 
hunt ; which has now, with its howling tumult that made 
Night hideous, flitted away ? — Ghosts ! There are nigh a 
thousand-million walking the Earth openly at noontide ; some 
half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have 
arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. 

* O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that 
we not only carry each a future Ghost within Him ; but are, 
in very deed. Ghosts ! These Limbs, whence had we them ; 
this stormy Force ; this life-blood with its burning Passion ? 



212 SARTOR RESARTUS [book iii. 

They are dust and shadow ; a Shadow-system gathered round 
our Me ; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine 
Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his 
strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes ; force dwells in 
his arm and heart : but warrior and war-horse are a vision ; 
a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they tread the Earth, 
as if it were a firm substance : fool ! the Earth is but a film ; 
it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond 
plummet's sounding. Plummet's.? Fantasy herself will not 
follow them. A little while ago, they were not ; a little 
while, and they are not, their very ashes are not. 

* So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the 
end. Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of 
a Body ; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's 
mission appears. What Force and Fire is in each he expends : 
one grinding in the mill of Industry ; one hunter-like climb- 
ing the giddy Alpine heights of Science ; one madly dashed 
in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow : — and 
then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls 
away, and soon even to sense becomes a vanished Shadow. 
Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of 
Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious Mankind thunder 
and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through 
the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing 
Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane ; haste stormfully across 
the astonished Earth ; then plunge again into the Inane. 
Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our 
passage : can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, 
resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the 
hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped-in ; the last 
Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But 
whence ? — O Heaven, whither ? Sense knows not ; Faith 
knows not ; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from 
God and to God. 

'* We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of^ and our little Life 
Is rounded with % sleep !'" 



CHAP. IX.] CIRCUMSPECTIVE 213 



CHAPTER IX 

CIRCUMSPECTIVE 

Recapitulation. Editor congratulates the few British readers who have 
accompanied Teuf elsdrockh through all his speculations. The true use of 
the Sartor Mesartus, to exhibit the Wonder of daily life and common 
things ; and to show that aU Forms are but Clothes, and temporary. Prac- 
tical inferences enough will follow. 

Here, then, arises the so momentous question : Have many 
British Readers actually arrived with us at the new promised 
country; is the Philosophy of Clothes now at last opening 
around them ? Long and adventurous has the journey been : 
from those outmost vulgar, palpable Woollen Hulls of Man; 
through his wondrous Flesh-Garment, and his wondrous Social 
Garnitures ; inwards to the Garments of his very Soul's Soul, 
to Time and Space themselves ! And now does the spiritual, 
eternal Essence of Man, and of Mankind, bared of such 
wrappages, begin in any measure to reveal itself.? Can many 
readers discern, as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering 
outlines, some primeval rudiments of Man's Being, what is 
changeable divided from what is unchangeable.? Does that 
Earth-Spirifs speech in Faust, — 

' Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply. 
And weave for God the Garment thou see'st Him by ' ; 

or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the Magician, 
Shakspeare, — 

' And like the baseless fabric of this vision. 
The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, 
The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself. 
And all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded. 
Leave not a wrack behind ' ; 

begin to have some meaning for us.? In a word, do we at 



214 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

length stand safe in the far region of Poetic Creation and 
Palingenesia, where that Phoenix Death-Birth of Human 
Society, and of all Human Things, appears possible, is seen 
to be inevitable ? 

Along this most insufficent, unheard-of Bridge, which the 
Editor, by Heaven's blessing, has now seen himself enabled to 
conclude if not complete, it cannot be his sober calculation, 
but only his fond hope, that many have travelled without 
accident. No firm arch, overspanning the Impassable with 
paved highway, could the Editor construct ; only, as was said, 
some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. 
Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft, were too often of a 
breakneck character ; the darkness, the nature of the element, 
all was against us ! 

Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thousand, 
provided with a discursiveness of intellect rare in our day, have 
cleared the passage, in spite of all ? Happy few ! little band 
of Friends ! be welcome, be of courage. By degrees, the eye 
grows accustomed to its new Whereabout ; the hand can 
stretch itself forth to work there : it is in this grand and 
indeed highest work of Palingenesia that ye shall labour, each 
according to ability. New labourers will arrive ; new Bridges 
will be built ; nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft 
Bridge, in your passings and repassings, be mended in many 
a point, till it grows quite firm, passable even for the 
halt ? 

Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started with 
us, joyous and full of hope, where now is the innumerable 
remainder, whom we see no longer by our side ? The most 
have recoiled, and stand gazing afar oiF, in unsympathetic 
astonishment, at our career : not a few, pressing forward with 
more courage, have missed footing, or leaped short ; and now 
swim weltering in the Chaos-flood, some towards this shore, 
some towards that. To these also a helping hand should 
be held out ; at least some word of encouragement be 
said. 



CHAP. IX.] CIRCUMSPECTIVE 215 

Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of utter- 
ance Teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat infected us, — can 
it be hidden from the Editor that many a British reader sits 
reading quite bewildered in head, and afflicted rather than 
instructed by the present Work ? Yes, long ago has many 
a British Reader been, as now, demanding with something 
like a snarl : Whereto does all this lead ; or what use is 
in it ? 

In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding 
thy digestive faculty, O British Reader, it leads to nothing, 
and there is no use in it ; but rather the reverse, for it costs 
thee somewhat. Nevertheless, if through this impromising 
Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, and we by means of him, have led 
thee into the true Land of Dreams ; and through the Clothes- 
Screen, as through a magical Pierre-Pertuis, thou lookest, even 
for moments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest and 
feelest that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based on 
Wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles, — 
then art thou profited beyond money's worth ; and hast a 
thankfulness towards our Professor ; nay, perhaps in many a 
literary Tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, and audibly express 
that same. 

Nay further, art not thou too perhaps by this time made 
aware that all Symbols are properly Clothes ; that all Forms 
whereby Spirit manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or 
in the imagination, are Clothes ; and thus not only the parch- 
ment Magna Charta, which a Tailor was nigh cutting into 
measures, but the Pomp and Authority of Law, the sacredness 
of Majesty, and all inferior Worships (Worthships) are properly 
a Vesture and Raiment ; and the Thirty-nine Articles them- 
selves are articles of wearing-apparel (for the Religious Idea) ? 
In which case, must it not also be admitted that this Science 
of Clothes is a high one, and may with infinitely deeper study 
on thy part yield richer fruit : that it takes scientific rank 
beside Codification, and Political Economy, and the Theory of 
the British Constitution ; nay rather, from its prophetic height 



216 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

looks down on all these, as on so many weaving-shops and 
spinning-mills, where the Vestures which it has to fashion, and 
consecrate and distribute, are, too often by haggard hungry 
operatives who see no farther than their nose, mechanically 
woven and spun ? 

, But omitting all this, much more all that concerns Natural 
Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has reference to the 
Ulterior or Transcendental portion of the Science, or bears 
never so remotely on that promised Volume of the Palingenesie 
der menschlichenGesellschaft (Newbirth of Society), — we humbly 
suggest that no province of Clothes-Philosophy, even the 
lowest, is without its direct value, but that innumerable infer- 
ences of a practical nature may be drawn therefrom. To say 
nothing of those pregnant considerations, ethical, political, 
symbolical, which crowd on the Clothes-Philosopher from the 
very threshold of his Science ; nothing even of those * archi- 
tectural ideas,' which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of 
all Modes, and will one day, better unfolding themselves, lead 
to important revolutions, — let us glance for a moment, and 
with the faintest light of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be 
called the Habilatory Class of our fellow-men. Here too over- 
looking, where so much were to be looked on, the million 
spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that 
puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, 
and die that we may live, — let us but turn the reader's atten- 
tion upon two small divisions of mankind, who, like moths, 
may be regarded as Cloth-animals, creatures that live, move, 
and have their being in Cloth : we mean. Dandies and Tailors. 
In regard to both which small divisions it may be asserted 
without scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by 
Philosophy,, is at fault; and even that the dictates of 
humanity are violated. As will perhaps abundantly appear 
to readers of the two following Chapters. 



CHAP, x] THE DANDIACAL BODY 217 

CHAPTER X 

THE DANDIACAL BODY 

The Dandy defined. The Dandiacal Sect a new modification of the primeval 
superstition Self -worship : How to be distinguished. Their Sacred Books 
(Fashionable Novels) unreadable. Dandyism's Articles of Faith. — Brother- 
hood of Poor-Slaves ; vowed to perpetual Poverty ; worshippers of Earth ; 
distinguished by peculiar costume and diet. Picture of a Poor-Slave 
Household; and of a Dandiacal. Teufelsdrockh fears these two Sects 
may spread, till they part all England between them, and then frightfully 
coUide. 

First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scientific 
strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is a Clothes- 
wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office, and existence consists 
in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, 
purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, 
the wearing of Clothes wisely and well : so that as others 
dress to live, he lives to dress. The all-importance of Clothes, 
which a German Professor, of unequalled learning and acumen, 
writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has sprung up in 
the intellect of the Dandy without effort, like an instinct of 
genius ; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What 
Teufelsdrockh would call a * Divine Idea of Cloth ' is born 
with him ; and this, like other such Ideas, will express itself 
outwardly, or wring his heart asunder with unutterable throes. 

But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly 
makes his Idea an Action ; shows himself in peculiar guise to 
mankind ; walks forth, a witness and living Martyr to the 
eternal world of Clothes. We called him a Poet : is not his 
body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes, with 
canning Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow ? 
Say, rather, an Epos, and Clotha Virumque cano, to the whole 
world, in Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. 
Nay, if you grant, what seems to be admissible, that the 
Dandy has a Thinking-principle in him, and some notions of 



218 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK III. 

Time and Space, is there not in this Life-devotedness to 
Cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal to the 
Perishable, something (though in reverse order) of that blend- 
ing and identification of Eternity with Time, which, as we 
have seen, constitutes the Prophetic character? 

And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and 
even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? 
Solely, we may say, that you would recognise his existence ; 
would admit him to be a living object ; or even failing this, a 
visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. Your 
silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has 
already secured him) he solicits not ; simply the glance of 
your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or altogether 
miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is 
contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful 
world, which refuses even this poor boon ; which will waste 
its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins ; and 
over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, 
glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed con- 
tempt ! Him no Zoologist classes among the Mammalia, no 
Anatomist dissects with care : when did we see any injected 
Preparation of the Dandy in our Museums ; any specimen of 
him preserved in spirits ? Lord Herringbone may dress 
himself in a snuff-brown suit, with snuff"-brown shirt and 
shoes : it skills not ; the undisceming public, occupied with 
grosser wants, passes by regardless on the other side. 

The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, 
properly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep : 
for here arises the Clothes-Philosophy to resuscitate, strangely 
enough, both the one and the other ! Should sound views of 
this Science come to prevail, the essential nature of the 
British Dandy, and the mystic significance that lies in him, 
cannot always remain hidden under laughable and lamentable 
hallucination. The following long Extract from Professor 
Teufelsdrockh may set the matter, if not in its true light, yet 
in the way towards such. It is to be regretted, however, that 



CHAP. X.] THE DANDIACAL BODY 219 

here, as so often elsewhere, the Professor's keen philosophic 
perspicacity is somewhat marred by a certain mixture of 
almost owlish purblindness, or else of some perverse, ineffec- 
tual, ironic tendency ; our readers shall judge which : 

* In these distracted times,' writes he, ' when the Religious 
Principle, driven out of most Churches, either lies unseen in 
the hearts of good men, looking and longing and silently 
working there towards some new Revelation ; or else wanders 
homeless over the world, like a disembodied soul seeking its 
terrestrial organisation, — into how many strange shapes, of 
Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not tentatively and 
errantly cast itself ! The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature 
is for the while without Exponent ; yet does it continue inde- 
structible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in the great 
chaotic deep : thus Sect after Sect, and Church after Church, 
bodies itself forth, and melts again into new metamorphosis. 

' Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the 
wealthiest and worst-instructed of European nations, offers 
precisely the elements (of Heat, namely, and of Darkness), in 
which such moon-calves and monstrosities are best generated. 
Among the newer Sects of that country, one of the most 
notable, and closely connected with our present subject, is 
that of the Dandies ; concerning which, what little informa- 
tion I have been able to procure may fitly stand here. 

' It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men gener- 
ally without sense for the Religious Principle, or judgment for 
its manifestations, speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, as if 
this were perhaps rather a Secular Sect, and not a Religious 
one ; nevertheless, to the psychologic eye its devotional and 
even sacrificial character plainly enough reveals itself. Whether 
it belongs to the class of Fetich- worships, or of Hero-worships 
or Polytheisms, or to what other class, may in the present 
state of our intelligence remain undecided (schweben). A 
certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic shape, 
is discernible enough : also (for human Error walks in a cycle. 



220 SARTOR RESARTUS [book IIL 

and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to 
that Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting from all 
nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of time into 
their own navels, came to discern therein the true Apocalypse 
of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. To my own surmise, it 
appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new modification, 
adapted to the new time, of that primeval Superstition, Self- 
'joorship ; which Zerdusht, Quangfoutchee, Mohamed, and 
others, strove rather to subordinate and restrain than to eradi- 
cate, and which only in the purer forms of Religion has been 
altogether rejected. Wherefore, if any one chooses to name it 
revived Ahrimanism, or a new figure of Demon-worship, I 
have, so far as is yet visible, no objection. 

* For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of a new 
Sect, display courage and perseverance, and what force there 
is in man"'s nature, though never so enslaved. They affect 
great purity and separatism ; distinguish themselves by a par- 
ticular costume (whereof some notices were given in the earlier 
part of this Volume) ; likewise, so far as possible, by a par- 
ticular speech (apparently some broken Lingua-franca, or 
English-French) ; and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true 
Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from the 
world. 

' They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish 
Temple did, stands in their metropolis ; and is named AlmacFs, 
a word of uncertain etymology. They worship principally by 
night ; and have their Highpriests and Highpriestesses, who, 
however, do not continue for life. The rites, by some sup- 
posed to be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleu- 
sinian or Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Nor are 
Sacred Books wanting to the Sect ; these they call Fashion- 
able Novels : however, the Canon is not completed, and some 
are canonical and others not. 

* Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, procured 
myself some samples ; and in hope of true insight, and with 
the zeal which beseems an Inquirer into Clothes, set to inter- 



CHAP. X.J THE DANDIACAL BODY 221 

pret and study them. But wholly to no purpose : that tough 
faculty of reading, for which the world will not refuse me 
credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at naught. 
In vain that I summoned my whole energies (mich weidlich an- 
strengte\ and did my very utmost ; at the end of some short 
space, I was uniformly seized with not so much what I can 
call a drumming in my ears, as a kind of infinite, unsuiFerable, 
Jew's harping and scrannel-piping there ; to which the fright- 
fullest species of Magnetic Sleep soon supervened. And if I 
strove to shake this away, and absolutely would not yield, 
there came a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of Delirium Tre- 
mens, and a melting into total deliquium : till at last, by order 
of the Doctor, dreading ruin to my whole intellectual and 
bodily faculties, and a general breaking-up of the constitution, 
I reluctantly but determinedly forbore. Was there some 
miracle at work here ; like those Fire-balls, and supernal and 
infernal prodigies, which, in the case of the Jewish Mysteries, 
have also more than once scared-back the Alien ? Be this as 
it may, such failure on my part, after best efforts, must excuse 
the imperfection of this sketch ; altogether incomplete, yet the 
completest I could give of a Sect too singiilar to be omitted. 

* Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power shall in- 
duce me, as a private individval, to open another Fashionable 
Novel. But luckily, in this dilemma, comes a hand from the 
clouds ; whereby if not victory, deliverance is held out to me. 
Round one of those Book-packages, which the Stillschweig- 
en'sche Buchhandlung is in the habit of importing from Eng- 
land, come, as is usual, various waste printed-sheets {Macu- 
latur-bldtter), by way of interior wrappage : into these the 
Clothes-Philosopher, with a certain Mohamedan reverence even 
for waste-paper, where curious knowledge will sometimes hover, 
disdains not to cast his eye. Readers may judge of his aston- 
ishment when on such a defaced stray-sheet, probably the out- 
cast fraction of some English Periodical, such as they name 
Magazine, appears something like a Dissertation on this very 
subject of Fashionable Novels I It sets out, indeed, chiefly 



222 SARTOR RESARTUS [book ill. 

from a Secular point of view ; directing itself, not without 
asperity, against some to me unknown individual named Pel- 
ham, who seems to be a Mystagogue, and leading Teacher and 
Preacher of the Sect ; so that, what indeed otherwise was not 
to be expected in such a fugitive fragmentary sheet, the true 
secret, the Religious physiognomy and physiology of the Daur 
diacal Body, is nowise laid fully open there. Nevertheless, 
scattered lights do from time to time sparkle out, whereby I 
have endeavoured to profit. Nay, in one passage selected 
from the Prophecies, or Mythic Theogonies, or whatever they 
are (for the style seems very mixed) of this Mystagogue, I find 
what appears to be a Confession of Faith, or Whole Duty of 
Man, according to the tenets of that Sect. Which Confession 
or Whole Duty, therefore, as proceeding from a source so 
authentic, I shall here arrange under Seven distinct Articles, 
and in very abridged shape lay before the German world ; 
therewith taking leave of this matter. Observe also, that to 
avoid possibility of error, I, as far as may be, quote literally 
from the Original : 

'articles of faith. 

" 1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about 
them ; at the same time, v^rinkles behind should be carefully 
avoided, 

" 2. The collar is a very important point : it should be 
low behind, and slightly rolled. 

" 3. No licence of fashion can allow a man of delicate 
taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot. 

" 4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. 

" 5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely 
developed than in his rings. 

''6. It is permitted to mankind, imder certain restrictions, 
to wear white waistcoats. 

" 7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips." 

* All which Propositions I, for the present, content myself 
with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably denying. 



CHAP. X.] THE DANDIACAL BODY 223 

*Iii strange contrast with this Dandiacal Body stands 
another British Sect, originally, as I understand, of Ireland, 
where its chief seat still is ; but known also in the main 
Island, and indeed everywhere rapidly spreading. As this 
Sect has hitherto emitted no Canonical Books, it remains to 
me in the same state of obscurity as the Dandiacal, which has 
published Books that the unassisted human faculties are 
inadequate to read. The members appear to be designated 
by a considerable diversity of names, according to their various 
places of establishment : in England they are generally called 
the Drudge Sect ; also, unphilosophically enough, the White 
Negroes ; and, chiefly in scorn by those of other communions, 
the Ragged-Beggar Sect. In Scotland, again, I find them 
entitled HallanshaJcers, or the StooJc of Duds Sect ; any 
individual communicant is named StooJc of Duds (that is. 
Shock of Rags), in allusion, doubtless, to their professional 
Costume. While in Ireland, which, as mentioned, is their 
grand parent hive, they go by a perplexing multiplicity of 
designations, such as Bogtrotters, Redshanks, Ribhonmen, 
Cottiers, Peep-of-Day Boys, Babes of the Wood, RocJcites, 
Poor-Slaves : which last, however, seems to be the primary 
and generic name ; whereto, probably enough, the others are 
only subsidiary species, or slight varieties ; or, at most, pro- 
pagated offsets from the parent stem, whose minute sub- 
divisions, and shades of difference, it were here loss of time to 
dwell on. Enough for us to understand, what seems indubit- 
able, that the original Sect is that of the Poor-Slaves ; whose 
doctrines, practices, and fundamental characteristics pervade 
and animate the whole Body, howsoever denominated or out- 
wardly diversified. 

' The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood : how 
the Universe, and Man, and Man's Life, picture themselves 
to the mind of an Irish Poor-Slave ; with what feelings and 
opinions he looks forward on the Future, round on the 
Present, back on the Past, it were extremely difficult to 
specify. Something Monastic there appears to be in their 



224 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

Constitution : we find them bound by the two Monastic Vows, 
of Poverty and Obedience ; which Vows> especially the former, 
it is said, they observe with great strictness ; nay, as I have 
understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn 
Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, 
even before birth. That the third Monastic Vow, of Chastity, 
is rigidly enforced among them, I find no ground to con- 
jecture. 

* Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal Sect 
in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar Costume. Of 
which Irish Poor-Slave Costume no description will indeed be 
found in the present Volume ; for this reason, that by the 
imperfect organ of Language it did not seem describable. 
Their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets and 
irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colours ; through the 
labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by 
some unknown process. It is fastened together by a multiplex 
combination of buttons, thrums, and skewers ; to which 
frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of 
straw rope, roimd the loins. To straw rope, indeed, they 
seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. In head- 
dress they affect a certain freedom : hats with partial brim, 
without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valved crown ; 
in the former case, they sometimes invert the hat, and wear it 
brim uppermdbc, like a University-cap, with what view is 
unknown. 

' The name Poor-Slaves seems to indicate a Slavonic, Polish, 
or Russian origin : not so, however, the interior essence and 
spirit of their Superstition, which rather displays a Teutonic 
or Druidical character. One might fancy them worshippers 
of Hertha, or the Earth : for they dig and affectionately work 
continually in her bosom ; or else, shut-up in private Oratories, 
meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her; 
seldom looking-up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and then 
with comparative indifference. Like the Druids, on the other 
hand, they live in dark dwellings ; often even breaking their 



CHAP. X.] THE DANDIACAL BODY 225 

glass-windows, where they find such, and stufiing them up with 
pieces of raiment, or other opaque substances, till the fit 
obscurity is restored. Again, like all followers of Nature- 
Worship, they are liable to outbreakings of an enthusiasm 
rising to ferocity ; and bum men, if not in wicker idols, yet 
in sod cottages. 

* In respect of diet, they have also their observances. All 
Poor-Slaves are Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters) ; a few are 
Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings : other animal food 
they abstain from ; except indeed, with perhaps some strange 
inverted fragment of a Brahminical feeling, such animals as 
die a natural death. Their universal sustenance is the root 
named Potato, cooked by fire alone ; and generally without 
condiment or relish of any kind, save an unknown condiment 
named Point, into the meaning of which I have vainly inquired ; 
the victual Potatoes-and-Point not appearing, at least not with 
specific accuracy of description, in any European Cookery-Book 
whatever. For drink, they use, with an almost epigrammatic 
counterpoise of taste. Milk, which is the mildest of Uquors, 
and Potheen, which is the fiercest. This latter I have tasted, 
as well as the English Blue-Ruin, and the Scotch Whisky, 
analogous fluids used by the Sect in ':hose countries : it 
evidently contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state 
of concentration, though disguised with acrid oils ; and is, on 
the whole, the most pungent substance known to me, — ^indeed, 
a perfect liquid fire. In all their Religious Solemnities, 
Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, and largely 
consumed. 

*An Irish Traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who 
presents himself under the to me unmeaning title of The late 
John Bernard, ofiers the following sketch of a domestic 
establishment, the inmates whereof, though such is not stated 
expressly, appear to have been of that Faith. Thereby shall 
my German readers now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as it were 
with their own eyes ; and even see him at meat. Moreover, 
in the so precious waste-paper sheet above mentioned, I have 



226 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

found some corresponding picture of a Dandiacal Household, 
painted by that same Dandiacal Mystagogue, or Theogonist : 
this also, by way of counterpart and contrast, the world shall 
look into. 

' First, therefore, of the Poor-Slave, who appears likewise to 
have been a species of Innkeeper. I quote from the original : 

Poor-Slave Household. 

V/ 

* " The furniture of this Caravansera consisted of a large 
iron Pot, two oaken Tables, two Benches, two Chairs, and a 
Potheen Noggin. There was a Loft above (attainable by a 
ladder),*'upon which the inmates slept ; and the space below 
was divided by a hurdle into two Apartments ; the one for 
their cow and pig, the other for themselves and guests. On 
entering the house we discovered the family, eleven in number, 
at dinner : the father sitting at the top, the mother at the 
bottom, the children on each side, of a large oaken Board, 
which was scooped-out in the middle, like a trough, to receive 
the contents of their Pot of Potatoes. Little holes were cut 
at equal distances to contaia Salt ; and a bowl of Milk stood 
on the table : all the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives 
and dishes were dispensed with." The Poor-Slave himself 
our Traveller found, as he says, broad-backed, black-browed, 
of great personal strength, and mouth from ear to ear. His 
Wife was a sun-browned but well-featured woman ; and his 
young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. Of 
their Philosophical or Religious tenets or observances, no 
notice or hint. 

* But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household ; in which, 
truly, that often-mentioned Mystagogue and inspired Pen- 
man himself has his abode : 

Dandiacal Household. 

* " A Dressing-room splendidly furnished ; violet-coloured 
curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two fiiU- 



CHAP. X.] THE DANDIACAL BODY 227 

length Mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which 
supports the luxuries of the Toilet. Several Bottles of Per- 
fumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller 
table of mother-of-pearl : opposite to these are placed the 
appurtenances of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. A 
Wardrobe of Buhl is on the left ; the doors of which, being 
partly open, discover a profusion of Clothes ; Shoes of a 
singularly small size monopolise the lower shelves. Fronting 
the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of a Bath- 
room. Folding-doors in the background. — ^Enter the Author," 
our Theogonist in person, " obsequiously preceded by a 
French Valet, in white silk Jacket and cambric Apron." 

' Such are the two Sects which, at this moment, divide the 
more imsettled portion of the British People ; and agitate 
that ever-vexed country. To the eye of the political Seer, 
their mutual relation, pregnant with the elements of discord 
and hostility, is far from consoling. These two principles of 
Dandiacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish 
or Drudgical Earth- worship, or whatever that same Drudgism 
may be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant 
and nowise considerable shapes : nevertheless, in their roots 
and subterranean ramifications, they extend through the entire 
structure of Society, and work unweariedly in the secret depths 
of English national Existence ; striving to separate and isolate 
it into two contradictory, uncommimicating masses. 

* In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor-Slaves 
or Drudges, it would seem, are hourly increasing. The Dan- 
diacal, again, is by nature no proselytising Sect ; but it boasts 
of great hereditary resources, and is strong by union ; whereas 
the Drudges, split into parties, have as yet no rallying-point ; 
or at best only cooperate by means of partial secret affilia- 
tions. If, indeed, there were to arise a Comrmmimi of Drudges, 
as there is already a Commimion of Saints, what strangest 
effects would follow therefrom ! Dandyism as yet affects to 
]ook-down on Drudgism : but perhaps the hour of trial, when 



228 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

it will be practically seen which ought to look down, and 
which up, is not so distant. 

* To me it seems probable that the two Sects will one day 
part England between them ; each recruiting itself from the 
intermediate ranks, till there be none left to enlist on either 
side. Those Dandiacal Manicheans, with the host of Dandy- 
ising Christians, will form one body : the Drudges, gathering 
round them whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel 
Pagan ; sweeping-up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radi- 
cals, refractory Potwallopers, and so forth, into their general 
mass, will form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudg- 
ism to two bottomless boiling Whirlpools that had broken- 
out on opposite quarters of the firm land : as yet they appear 
only disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, which man''s art might 
cover-in ; yet mark them, their diameter is daily widening : 
they are hollow Cones that boil-up from the infinite Deep, 
over which your firm land is but a thin crust or rind ! Thus 
daily is the intermediate land crumbling-in, daily the empire 
of the two Buchan-Bullers extending ; till now there is but a 
foot-plank, a mere film of Land between them ; this too is 
washed away : and then — ^we have the true Hell of Waters, 
and Noah's Deluge is outdeluged ! 

* Or better, I might call them two boundless, and indeed 
unexampled Electric Machines (turned by the " Machinery of 
Society "), with batteries of opposite quality ; Drudgism the 
Negative, Dandyism the Positive : one attracts hourly towards 
it and appropriates all the Positive Electricity of the nation 
(namely, the Money thereof) ; the other is equally busy with 
the Negative (that is to say the Hunger), which is equally 
potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and 
sputters : but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an elec- 
tric state ; till your whole vital Electricity, no longer health- 
fully Neutral, is cut into two isolated portions of Positive and 
Negative (of Money and of Hunger); and stands there 
bottled-up in two World-Batteries ! The stirring of a child's 
finger brings the two together ; and then — ^What then ? The 



CHAP. XI.] TAILORS 229 

Earth is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom''s- 
thimderpeal ; the Sxm misses one of his Planets in Space, and 
thenceforth there are no eclipses of the Moon. — Or better 
still, I might liken '' 

O, enough, enough of likenings and similitudes ; in excess 
of which, truly, it is hard to say whether Teufelsdrockh or 
ourselves sin the more. 

We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing and 
over-refining ; from of old we have been familiar with his 
tendency to Mysticism and Religiosity, whereby in everything 
he was stUl scenting-out Religion : but never perhaps did 
these amaurosis-suffusions so cloud and distort his otherwise 
most piercing vision, as in this of the Dandiacal Body ! Or 
was there something of intended satire ; is the Professor and 
Seer not quite the blinkard he affects to be ? Of an ordinary 
mortal we should have decisively answered in the affirmative ; 
but with a Teufelsdrockh there ever hovers some shade of 
doubt. In the meanwhile, if satire were actually intended, 
the case is little better. There are not wanting men who 
will answer : Does yoiu: Professor take us for simpletons ? 
His irony has overshot itself; we see through it, and perhaps 
through him. 



CHAPTER XI 

TAILORS 

Injustice done to Tailors, actual and metaphorical. Their rights and great 
services will one day be duly recognised. 

Thus, however, has our first Practical Inference from the 
Clothes-Philosophy, that which respects Dandies, been suffi- 
ciently drawn ; and we come now to the second, concerning 
Tailors. On this latter our opinion happily quite coincides 
with that of Teufelsdrockh himself, as expressed in the con- 
cluding page of his Volume, to whom, therefore, we willingly 



SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK III. 

give place. Let him speak his own last words, in his own 
way: 

* Upwards of a century,' says he, * must elapse, and still the 
bleeding fight of Freedom be fought, whoso is noblest perish- 
ing in the van, and thrones be hurled on altars like Pelion on 
Ossa, and the Moloch of Iniquity have his victims, and the 
Michael of Justice his martyrs, before Tailors can be admitted 
to their true prerogatives of manhood, and this last wound of 
suffering Humanity be closed. 

* If aught in the history of the world's blindness could 
surprise us, here might we indeed pause and wonder. An 
idea has gone abroad, and fixed itself down into a wide- 
spreading rooted error, that Tailors are a distinct species in 
Physiology, not Men, but fractional Parts of a Man. Call 
any one a Schneider (Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our dislo- 
cated, hoodwinked, and indeed delirious condition of Society, 
equivalent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity.'* The 
epithet schneidermdssig (tailor-like) betokens an otherwise un- 
approachable degree of pusillanimity : we introduce a Tailor's- 
Melancholy, more opprobrious than any Leprosy, into our 
Books of Medicine ; and fable I know not what of his gene- 
rating it by living on Cabbage. Why should I speak of 
Hans Sachs (himself a Shoemaker, or kind of Leather-Tailor), 
with his Schneider mit dem Panier ? Why of Shakspeare, in 
his Taming of the Shrew, and elsewhere ? Does it not stand 
on record that the English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a 
deputation of Eighteen Tailors, addressed them with a 
" Good -morning, gentlemen both!" Did not the same 
virago boast that she had a Cavalry Regiment, whereof 
neither horse nor man could be injured ; her Regiment, 
namely, of Tailors on Mares ? Thus everywhere is the false- 
hood taken for granted, and acted on as an indisputable fact. 

* Nevertheless, need I put the question to any Physiologist, 
whether it is disputable or not ? Seems it not at least pre- 
sumable, that, under his Clothes, the Tailor has bones and 



CHAP. XL] TAILORS 231 

viscera, and other muscles than the sartorious? Which 
function of manhood is the Tailor not conjectured to 
perform ? Can he not arrest for debt ? Is he not in most 
countries a tax-paying animal ? 

' To no reader of this Volume can it be doubtful which 
conviction is mine. ;Nay if the fruit of these long vigils, and 
almost preternatural Inquiries, is not to perish utterly, the 
world will have approximated towards a higher Truth ;/ and 
the doctrine, which Swift, with the keen forecast of genius, 
dimly anticipated, will stand revealed in clear light : /that the 
Tailor is not only a Man, but something of a Creator or 
Divinity. Of Franklin it was said, that "he snatched the 
Thunder from Heaven and the Sceptre from Kings " : ' but 
which is greater, I would ask, he that lends, or he that 
snatches ? v For, looking away from individual cases, and how 
a Man is by the Tailor new-created into a Nobleman, and 
clothed not only with Wool but with Dignity and a Mystic 
Dominion, — ^is not the fair fabric of Society itself, with all 
its royal mantles and pontifical stoles, whereby, from naked- 
ness and dismemberment, we are organised into Polities, into 
nations, and a whole cooperating Mankind, the creation, as 
has here been often irrefragably evinced, of the Tailor alone ? 
— ^What too are all Poets and moral Teachers, but a species 
of Metaphorical Tailors ? Touching which high Guild the 
greatest living Guild-brother has triumphantly asked us : 
/" Nay if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet first made Gods 
for men ; brought them down to us ; and raised us up to 
them ? "/ 

* And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis 
of his Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the 
ninth part of a man ! Look up, thou much-injured one, look 
up with the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic bodings of a 
noble better time. Too long hast thou sat there, on crossed 
legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn ; like some sacred An- 
chorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing down 
Heaven's richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. 



232 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

Be of hope ! Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; 
'the thick gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will 
be Day. \ Mankind will repay with interest their long-accumu- 
lated debt : the Anchorite that was scoffed at will be wor- 
shipped ; the Fraction will become not an Integer only, but 
a Square and Cube. With astonishment the world will 
recognise that the Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or 
even its God. 

* As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked upon 
these Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroidering that 
rich Cloth, which the Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba of 
Mecca, I thought within myself: How many other Unholies 
has your covering Art made holy, besides this Arabian Whin- 
stone ! 

' Still more touching was it when, turning the comer of a 
lane, in the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came upon a Sign- 
post, whereon stood written that such and such a one was 
"Breeches-Maker to his Majesty"; and stood painted the 
Effigies of a Pair of Leather Breeches, and between the knees 
these memorable words. Sic itur ad astra. Was not this 
the martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, 
yet sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing 
to a better day? A day of justice, when the worth of 
Breeches would be revealed to man, and the Scissors become 
forever venerable. 

'Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal been 
altogether in vain. It was in this high moment, when the 
soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, is open to inspiring 
influence, that I first conceived this Work on Clothes : the 
greatest I can ever hope to do ; which has already, after long 
retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a section 
of my Life ; and of which the Primary and simpler Portion 
may here find its conclusion.' 



CHAP. XII.] FAREWELL 233 



CHAPTER XII 

FAREWELL 

Teuf elsdriickh's strange maimer of speech, but resolute, truthful character : 
His purpose seemingly to proselytise, to unite the wakeful earnest in these 
dark times. Letter from Hofrath Heuschrecke announcing that Teufels- 
drockh has disappeared from Weissnichtwo. Editor guesses he wiU appear 
again. Friendly FarewelL 

So have we endeavoured, from the enormous, amorphous 
Plum-pudding, more like a Scottish Haggis, which Herr Teu- 
felsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow-mortals, to pick out the 
choicest Plums, and present them separately on a cover of our 
own. A laborious, perhaps a thankless enterprise ; in which, 
however, something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and 
of which we can now wash our hands not altogether without 
satisfaction. K hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel 
of spiritual nourishment have been added to the scanty ration 
of our beloved British world, what nobler recompense could 
the Editor desire.? If it prove otherwise, why should he 
murmur ? Was not this a Task which Destiny, in any case, 
had appointed him ; which having now done with, he sees his 
general Day's- work so much the lighter, so much the shorter ? 

Of Professor Teufelsdrockh it seems impossible to take leave 
without a mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude, and dis- 
approval. Who will not regret that talents, which might 
have profited in the higher walks of Philosophy, or in Art 
itself, have been so much devoted to a rummaging among 
lumber-rooms ; nay too often to a scraping in kennels, where 
lost rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests ? 
Regret is unavoidable ; yet censure were loss of time. To 
cure him of his mad humours British Criticism would essay in 
vain: enough for her if she can, by vigilance, prevent the 
spreading of such among ourselves. What a result, should 
this piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of writing. 



234 SARTOR RESARTUS [book m. 

not to say of thinking, become general among our Literary 
men ! As it might so easily do. Thus has not the Editor 
himself, working over Teufelsdrockh's German, lost much of 
his own English purity? Even as the smaller whirlpool is 
sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along with it, so 
has the lesser mind, in this instance, been forced to become 
portion of the greater, and, like it, see all things figuratively : 
which habit time and assiduous eiFort will be needed to 
eradicate. 

Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows himself, is 
there any reader that can part with him in declared enmity ? 
Let us confess, there is that in the wild, much-suffering, much- 
inflicting man, which almost attaches us. His attitude, we 
will hope and believe, is that of a man who had said to Cant, 
Begone ; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be ; and 
to Truth, Be thou in place of all to me : a man who had 
manfully defied the ' Time-prince,' or Devil, to his face ; nay 
perhaps, Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from 
birth to that warfare, and now stood minded to wage the 
same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. In such a 
cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack Scythe-man, shall be 
welcome. 

Still the question returns on us : How could a man occa- 
sionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, 
who had real Thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit them 
in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd ? Which 
question he were wiser than the present Editor who should 
satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, 
that perhaps Necessity as well as Choice was concerned in it. 
Seems it not conceivable that, in a Life like owe Professor's, 
where so niuch bountifully given by Nature had in Practice 
failed and misgone. Literature also would never rightly 
prosper : that striving with his characteristic vehemence to 
paint this and the other Picture, and ever without success, 
he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all colours, 
against the canvas, to try whether it will paint Foam ? With 



CHAP. XII.] FAREWELL 235 

all his stillness, there were perhaps in Tenfelsdrockh desper- 
ation enough for this. 

A second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. 
It is, that Tenfelsdrockh is not without some touch of the 
universal feeling, a wish to proselytise. How often already 
have we paused, uncertain whether the basis of this so 
enigmatic nature were really Stoicism and Despair, or Love 
and Hope only seared into the figure of these ! Remarkable, 
moreover, is this saying of his : ' How were Friendship 
possible ? In mutual devotedness to the Good and True : 
otherwise impossible ; except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow 
Commercial League. (A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is 
sufficient for himself;) yet were ten men, united in Love, 
capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly 
would fail in. \Infinite is the help man can yield to man.'/ 
And now in conjunction therewith consider this other ^* It is 
the Night of the World, and still long till it be Day :/ we 
wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun and 
the Stars of Heaven are as if blotted out for a season ; and 
two immeasurable Phantoms, Hypocrisy and Atheism, with 
the Gowl, Sensuality, stalk abroad over the Earth, and call 
it theirs : \well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is 
a shallow Dream.' \ 

But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find it a Reality ? 
Should not these unite ; since even an authentic Spectre is 
not visible to Two ? — ^In which case were this enormous 
Clothes- Volume properly an enormous Pitchpan, which oui 
Tenfelsdrockh in his lone watchtower had kindled, that it 
might flame far and wide through the Night, and many a dis- 
consolately wandering spirit be guided thither to a Brother's 
bosom ! — We say as before, with all his malign Indifference, 
who knows what mad Hopes this man may harbour ? 

Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which har- 
monises ill with such conjecture ; and, indeed, were Tenfels- 
drockh made like other men, might as good as altogether 
subvert it. Namely, that while the Beacon-fire blazed its 



236 SARTOR RESARTUS [BOOK III 

brightest, the Watchman had quitted it; that no pilgrim 
could now ask him : Watchman, what of the Night ? Pro- 
fessor Teufelsdrdckh, be it known, is no longer visibly present 
at Weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in space ! 
Some time ago, the Hofrath Heuschrecke was pleased to 
favour us with another copious Epistle ; wherein much is said 
about the ' Population-Institute ' ; much repeated in praise of 
the Paper-bag Documents, the hieroglyphic nature of which 
our Hofrath still seems not to have surmised ; and, lastly, the 
strangest occurrence communicated, to us for the first time, in 
the following paragraph : 

' Ew. Wohlgehoren will have seen from the public Prints, 
with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude Weiss- 
nichtwo regards the disappearance of her Sage. Might but 
the united voice of Germany prevail on him to return ; nay 
could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what 
mystery he went away ! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences 
or affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance : 
in the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up ; the Privy 
Council itself can hitherto elicit no answer. 

* It had been remarked that while the agitating news of 
those Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to mouth, and 
dinned every ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufelsdrockh was 
not known, at the Gans or elsewhere, to have spoken, for a 
whole week, any syllable except once these three : Es geht an 
(It is beginning). Shortly after, as Ew. Wdhlgeboren knows, 
was the public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threatened by a 
Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want Evil-wishers, or 
perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that the 
closing Chapter of the Clothes- Volume was to blame. In 
this appalling crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was inde- 
scribable : nay, perhaps through one humble individual, some- 
thing thereof might pass into the Rath (Council) itself, and 
so contribute to the country's deliverance. The Tailors are 
now entirely pacificated. — 

* To neither of these two incidents can I attribute our loss ; 



CHAP. XII.] FAREWELL 237 

yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris 
and its Politics. For example, when the Saint- Simonian 
Society transmitted its Propositions hither, and the whole 
Gans was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation, and 
astonishment, our Sage sat mute ; and at the end of the 
third evening said merely :/ " Here also are men who have 
discovered, not without amazement, that Man is still Man ; 
of which high, long-forgotten Truth you already see them 
make a false application."/ Since then, as has been ascer- 
tained by examination of the Post-Director, there passed at 
least one Letter with its Answer between the Messieurs 
Bazard-Enfantin and our Professor himself; of what tenor 
can now only be conjectured. On the fifth night following, 
he was seen for the last time ! 

' Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the 
hostile Sects that convulse our Era, been spirited away by 
certain of their emissaries ; or did he go forth volimtarily to 
their head-quarters to confer with them and confront them ? 
Reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to believe the 
Lost still living ; our widowed heart also whispers that ere 
long he will himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, his 
archives must, one day, be opened by Authority ; where much, 
perhaps the Palingenesie itself, is thought to be reposited.' 

Thus far the Hofrath ; who vanishes, as is his wont, too 
like an Ignis Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. 

So that Teufelsdrockh's public History were not done, then, 
or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor : nay, perhaps the 
better part thereof were only beginning ? j* We stand in a 
region of conjectures, where substance has melted into 
shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other, y 
May Time, which solves or suppresses all problems, throw 
glad light on this also ! Our own private conjectm-e, now 
amounting almost to certainty, is that, safe-moored in some 
stillest obscurity, not to lie always still, Teufelsdrockh is 
actually in London ! 



238 SARTOR RESARTUS [book III. 

Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial 
joy as of over- weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. 
Well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that 
to innumerable British readers likewise, this is a satisfying 
consummation ; that innumerable British readers consider him, 
during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption 
to their ways of thought and digestion ; and indicate so 
much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invec- 
tive. For which, as for other mercies, ought not he to thank 
the Upper Powers ? To one and all of you, O irritated 
readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave 
a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, who namest 
thyself YoRKE and Olivee, and with thy vivacities and geni- 
alities, with thy ail-too Irish mirth and madness, and odour 
of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell ; long as 
thou canst, tare-well ! Have we not, in the course of Eternity, 
travelled some months of our Life-journey in partial sight of 
one another ; have we not existed together, though in a state 
of quarrel ? 



APPENDIX 

TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS 



This questionable little Book was undoubtedly written among 
the mountain solitudes, in 1831 ; but, owing to impediments 
natural and accidental, could not, for seven years more, appear as 
a Volume in England; — and had at last to clip itself in pieces, 
and be content to struggle out, bit by bit, in some courageous 
Magazine that offered. Whereby now, to certain idly curious 
readers, and even to myself till I make study, the insignificant but 
at last irritating question. What its real history and chronology 
are, is, if not insoluble, considerably involved in haze. 

To the first English Edition, 1838, which an American, or two 
American had now opened the way for, there was slightingly 
prefixed, under the title ' Testimonies of Authors/ some straggle of 
real documents, which, now that I find it again, sets the matter 
into clear light and sequence ; — and shall here, for removal of idle 
stumbling-blocks and nugatory guessings from the path of every 
reader, be reprinted as it stood. (Author's Note of 1868.) 



TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS 

I. Highest Class, Bookseller's Taster 

Taster to Bookseller. — ' The Author of Teufelsdrockh is a person 
of talent ; his work displays here and there some felicity of thought 
and expression, considerable fancy and knowledge : but whether 
or not it would take with the public seems doubtful. For a-jeu 
d' esprit of that kind it is too long; it would have suited better as 
an essay or article than as a volume. The Author has no great 
tact; his wit is frequently heavy ; and reminds one of the German 
Baron who took to leaping on tables, and answered that he was 
learning to be lively. Is the work a translation ? ' 

Bookseller to Editor. — ' Allow me to say that such a writer 



242 APPENDIX 

requires only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an 
able work. Directly on receiving your permission, I sent your 
Ms. to a gentleman in the highest class of men of lettei's, and an 
accomplished German scholar: I now enclose you his opinion, 
which, you may rely upon it, is a just one; and I have too high an 
opinion of your good sense to" &c. &c. — My. (penes nos), London, 
17th September 1831. 

II. Critic of the Sun 

' Fraser's Magazine exhibits the usual brilliancy, and also the' 
&c. ' Sartor Resartus is what old Dennis used to call " a heap of 
clotted nonsense," mixed however, here and there, with passages 
marked by thought and striking poetic vigour. But what does 
the writer mean by " Baphometic fire-baptism" ? Why cannot he 
lay aside his pedantry, and write so as to make himself generally 
intelligible.'' We quote by way of curiosity a sentence from the 
Sartor Resartus ; which may be read either backwards or forwards, 
for it is equally intelligible either way : indeed, by beginning at 
the tail, and so working up to the head, we think the reader will 
stand the fairest chance of getting at its meaning : " The fire- 
baptized soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its 
own freedom ; which feeling is its Baphometic baptism : the 
citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and 
will keep inexpugnable ; outwards from which the remaining 
dominions, not indeed without hard battering, will doubtless by 
degrees be conquered and pacificated." Here is a' — ..... — 
Sun Newspaper, 1st April 1834. 

III. North- American Reviewer 

' After a careful survey of the whole ground, our belief 

ts that no such persons as Professor Teufelsdrock or Counsellor 
Heuschrecke ever' existed; that the six Paper-bags, with their 
China-ink inscriptions and multifarious contents, are a mere 
figment of the brain ; that the " present Editor " is the only person 
who has ever written upon the Philosophy of Clothes ; and that 
the Sartor Resartus is the only treatise that has yet appeared upon 
that subject ; — in short, that the whole account of the origin of 



TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS 243 

the work before us, which the supposed Editor relates with so 
much gravity, and of which we have given a brief abstract, is, in 
plain English, a hum. 

'Without troubling our readers at any great length with our 
reasons for entertaining these suspicions, we may remark, that the 
absence of all other information on the subject, except what is 
contained in the work, is itself a fact of a most significant character. 
The whole German press, as well as the particular one where the 
work purports to have been printed, seems to be under the control 
of Stillschrveigen and Co. — Silence and Company. If the Clothes- 
Philosophy and its author are making so great a sensation through- 
out Germany as is pretended, how happens it that the only notice 
we have of the fact is contained in a few numbers of a monthly 
Magazine published at London } How happens it that no intelli- 
gence about the matter has come out directly to this country ? 
We pique ourselves here in New England upon knowing at least 
as much of what is going on in the literary way in the old Dutch 
Mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored Isle ; but thus 
far we have no tidings whatever of the " extensive close-printed 
close-meditated volume," which forms the subject of this pretended 
commentary. Again, we would respectfully inquire of the " present 
Editor " upon what part of the map of Germany we are to look for 
the city of Weissnichtrvo — "Know-not-where" — at which place the 
work is supposed to have been printed, and the Author to have 
resided. It has been our fortune to visit several portions of the 
German territory, and to examine pretty carefully, at different 
times and for various purposes, maps of the whole ; but we have 
no recollection of any such place. We suspect that the city of 
Knorv-not-where might be called, with at least as much propriety, 
Nohody-knows-where, and is to be found in the kingdom of Nowhere. 
Again, the village of Entepfuhl — "Duck-pond" — where the supposed 
Author of the work is said to have passed his youth, and that of 
Hinterschlag, where he had his education, are equally foreign to 
our geography. Duck-ponds enough there undoubtedly are in 
almost every village in Germany, as the traveller in that country 
knows too well to his cost, but any particular village denominated 
Duck-pond is to us altogether terra incognita. The names of the 
personages are not less singular than those of the places. Who 



244 APPENDIX 

can refrain from a smile at the yoking together of such a pair of 
appellatives as Diogenes Teufelsdrockh ? The supposed bearer 
of this strange title is represented as admitting, in his pretended 
autobiography, that " he had searched to no purpose through all 
the Heralds' books in and without the German empire, and 
through all manner of Subscribers'-lists, Militia-rolls, and other 
Name-catalogues," but had nowhere been able to find "the name 
Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to his own person." We can 
readily believe this, and we doubt very much whether any Christian 
parent would think of condemning a son to carry through life the 
burden of so unpleasant a title. That of Counsellor Heuschrecke 
— " Grasshopper " — though not offensive, looks much more like a 
piece of fancy work than a "fair business transaction." The same 
may be said of Blumine — "Flower-Goddess" — the heroine of the 
fable ; and so of the rest. 

' In short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, that the 
whole story of a correspondence with Germany, a university of 
Nobody-knows-where, a Professor of Things in General, a Coun- 
sellor Grasshopper, a Flower-Goddess Blumine, and so forth, has 
about as much foundation in truth as the late entertaining account 
of Sir John Herschel's discoveries in the moon. Fictions of this 
kind are, however, not uncommon, and ought not, perhaps, to be 
condemned with too much severity ; but we are not sure that we 
can exercise the same indulgence in regard to the attempt, which 
seems to be made to mislead the public as to the substance of the 
work before us, and its pretended Gei*man original. Both purport, 
as we have seen, to be upon the subject of Clothes, or dress. 
Clothes, their Origin and Injluence, is the title of the supposed 
German treatise of Professor Teufelsdrockh, and the rather odd 
name of Sartor Resartus — the Tailor Patched — which the present 
Editor has affixed to his pretended commentary, seems to look the 
same way. But though there is a good deal of remark throughout 
the work in a half-serious, half-comic style upon dress, it seems to 
be in reality a treatise upon the great science of Things in General, 
which Teufelsdrockh is supposed to have professed at the uni- 
versity of Nobody-knows-where. Now, without intending to adopt 
a too rigid standard of morals, we own that we doubt a little the 
propriety of offermg to the public a treatise on Things in General , 



TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS 245 

under the name and in the form of an Essay on Dress. For 
ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately are in the journey of life, 
far beyond the period when dress is practically a matter of interest, 
we have no hesitation in saying, that the real subject of the work 
is to us more attractive than the ostensible one. But this is 
probably not the case with the mass of readers. To the younger 
portion of the community, which constitutes everywhere the very 
great majority, the subject of dress is one of intense and para- 
mount importance. An author who treats it appeals, like the 
poet, to the young men and maidens — virginibus puerisque — and 
calls upon them, by all the motives which habitually operate most 
strongly upon their feelings, to buy his book. When, after open- 
ing their purses for this purpose, they have carried home the work 
in triumph, expecting to find in it some particular instruction in 
regard to the tying of their neckcloths, or the cut of their cor- 
sets, and meet with nothing better than a dissertation on Things 
in General, they will — to use the mildest term — not be in very 
good humour. If the last improvements in legislation, which we 
have made in this country, should have found their way to England, 
the author, we think, would stand some chance of being Lynched. 
Whether his object in this piece oi supercherie be merely pecuniary 
profit, or whether he takes a malicious pleasure in quizzing the 
Dandies, we shall not undertake to say. In the latter part of the 
work, he devotes a separate chapter to this class of persons, from 
the tenor of which we should be disposed to conclude, that he 
would consider any mode of divesting them of their property very 
much in the nature of a spoiling of the Egyptians. 

'The only thing about the work, tending to prove that it is 
what it purports to be, a commentary on a real German treatise, 
is the style, which is a sort of Babylonish dialect, not destitute, it 
is true, of richness, vigour, and at times a sort of singular felicity 
of expression, but very strongly tinged throughout with the peculiar 
idiom of the German language. This quality in the style, how- 
ever, may be a mere result of a great familiarity with German 
literature ; and we cannot, therefore, look upon it as in itself 
decisive, still less as outweighing so much evidence of an opposite 
character.' — North-American Revierv, No. 89, October 1835. 

a 2 



246 APPENDIX 

IV. New-England Editors 

' The Editors have been induced, by the express desire of many 
persons, to collect the following sheets out of the ephemeral 
pamphlets^ in which they first appeared, under the conviction 
that they contain in themselves the assurance of a longer date. 

'The Editors have no expectation that this little Work will 
have a sudden and general popularity. They will not undertake, 
as there is no need, to justify the gay costume in which the Author 
delights to dress his thoughts, or the German idioms with which 
he has sportively sprinkled his pages. It is his humour to advance 
the gravest speculations upon the gravest topics in a quaint and 
burlesque style. If his masquerade offend any of his audience, to 
that degree that they will not hear what he has to say, it may 
chance to draw others to listen to his wisdom; and what work 
of imagination can hope to please all .'' But we will venture to 
remark that the distaste excited by these peculiarities in some 
readers is greatest at first, and is soon forgotten; and that the 
foreign dress and aspect of the Work are quite superficial, and 
cover a genuine Saxon heart. We believe, no book has been 
published for many years, written in a more sincere style of idio- 
matic English, or which dicovers an equal mastery over all the 
riches of the language. The Author makes ample amends for the 
occasional eccentricity of his genius, not only by frequent bursts of 
pure splendour, but by the wit and sense which never fail him. 

' But what will chiefly commend the Book to the discerning 
reader is the manifest design of the work, which is, a Criticism upon 
the Spirit of the Age — we had almost said, of the hour — in which 
we live ; exhibiting in the most j ust and novel light the present 
aspects of Religion, Politics, Literature, Arts, and Social Life 
Under all his gaiety the Writer has an earnest meaning, and dis- 
covers an insight into the manifold wants and tendencies of human 
nature, which is very rare among our popular authors. The philan- 
thropy and the purity of moral sentiment, which inspire the work, 
will find their way to the heart of every lover of virtue.' — Preface 
to Sartor Resartus : Boston, 1835, 1837. 

Sunt, Fuerunt vel Fuere. 
London, 30i/i June 1838. 

i Eraser's (London) Magazine, 1833-4. 



INDEX TO SARTOR 



Action the true end of Man, 126, 129. 
Actual, the, the true Ideal, 156, 157. 
Adamitism, 145. 
Afflictions, merciful, 153. 
Ambition, 83. 
Apprenticeships, 97. 
Aprons, use and significance of, 83. 
Art, all true Works of, symbolic, 178. 

BapJaometic Fire-baptism, 136. 

Battle-field, a, 139. 

Battle, Life-, our, 69; with Folly and Sin, 
99, 102. 

Being, the boundless Phantasmagoria of, 
41. 

Belief and Opinions, 155, 156. 

Bible of Universal History, 142, 155. 

Biography, meaning and uses of, 60 ; sig- 
nificance of biographic facts, 161. 

Blumine, 110 ; her environment, 111; cha- 
racter, and relation to Teufelsdrockh, 
112 ; blissful bonds rent asimder, 115 ; 
on her way to England, 123. 

Bolivar's Cavalry-uniform, 39. 

Books, influence of, 138, 158. 

Childhood, happy season of, 71 ; early in- 
fluences and sports, 73. 

Christian Faith, a good Mother's simple 
version of the, 79 ; Temple of the, now 
in ruins, 154 ; Passive-half of, 155. 

Christian Love, 151 , 153. 

Church-Clothes, 170 ; living and dead 
Churches, 171; the modern Church 
and its Newspaper-Pulpits, 201. 

Circumstances, influence of, 75. 

Clergy, the, with their surplices and cas- 
sock-aprons girt-on, 34, 167. 

Clothes, not a spontaneous growth of the 
human animal, but an artificial device, 
2; analogy between the Costumes of 
the body and the Customs of the spirit, 
27; Decoration the first purpose of 
Clothes, 30; what Clothes have done 
for us, and what they threaten to do, 
31, 45; fantastic garbs of the Middle 
A.ges, 36; a simple costume, 37; tan- 



gible and mystic influences of Clothes, 
38, 47; animal and human Clothing 
contrasted, 43 ; a Court-Ceremonial mi- 
nus Clothes, 48 ; necessity for Clothes, 
50; transparent Clothes, 52; all Em- 
blematic things are Clothes, 57, 215 ; 
genesis of the modern Clothes-Philo- 
sopher, 64; Character and conditions 
needed, 162, 165; George Fox's suit of 
Leather,168; Church-Clothes,170; Old- 
Clothes, 190 ; practical inferences, 216. 

Codification, 53. 

Combination, value of, 107, 235. 

Commons, British House of, 33. 

Concealment. See Secrecy. 

Constitution, our invaluable British, 198. 

Conversion, 158. 

Courtesy, due to all men, 190. 

Courtier, a luckless, 38. 

Custom the greatest of Weavers, 206. ^ 

Dandy, mystic significance of the, 217 ; 
dandy worship, 219; sacred books, 220; 
articles of faith, 222 ; a dandy house- 
hold, 226 ; tragically undermined by 
growing Drudgery, 227. v 

Death, nourishment even in, 85, 134. 

Devil, internecine war with the, 10, 95, 
136, 147 ; cannot now so much as be- 
lieve in him, 134, 

Dilettantes and Pedants, 55 ; patrons of 
Literature, 101. 

Diogenes, 168. 

Doubt can only be removed by Action, 
157. See Unbelief. 

Drudgery contrasted with Dandyism, 223; 
'Communion of Drudges,' and what 
may come of it, 227. 

Duelling, a picture of, 144. 

Duty, no longer a divine Messenger and 
Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, 
130, 131 ; infinite nature of, 155. 

Editor's first acquaintance with Teufels- 
drockh and his Philosophy of Clothes, 
5 ; efforts to make known his discovery 
to British readers, 7 ; admitted into the 
247 



248 



SARTOR RESARTUS 



Teufelsdrockliwatch-to-wer, 15, 26; first 
feels the pressure of his task, 40 ; his 
bulky "VVeissnichtwo Packet, 58 ; stre- 
nuous efforts to evolve some historic 
order out of such interminable docu- 
mentary confusion, 62 ; partial success, 
71, 80, 124 ; mysterious hints, 161, 187 ; 
astonishment and hesitation, 172 ; con- 
gratulations, 214; farewell, 233. 

Education, influence of early, 75 ; insig- 
nificant portion depending on Schools, 
81 ; educational Architects, 84 ; the in- 
spired Thinker, 181. 

Emblems, all visible things, 57. 

Emigration, 183. 

Eternity, looking through Time, 16, 58, 
178. 

Evil, Origin of, 151. 

Eyes and Spectacles, 54. 

Facts, engraved Hierograms, for which 
the fewest have the key, 161. 

Faith, the one thing needful, 129. 

Fantasy, the true Heaven-gate or Hell- 
gate of man, 115, 175. 

Fashionable Novels, 221. 

Fatherhood, 68. 

Feebleness, the true misery, 131. 

Fire, and vital fire, 56, 136. 

Force, universal presence of, 56. 

fortunatus' Wishing-hat, 207, 209 

Foz's, George, heavenward aspirations 
and earthly independence, 166. 

Fraser's Magazine, 7, 242. 

Frederick the Great, symbolic glimpse of, 
64. 

Friendship, now obsolete, 94; an incre- 
dible tradition, 132, 185; how it were 
possible, 171, 235. 

Futteral and his Wife, 64. 

Future, organic filaments of the, 194. 

Genius, the world's treatment of, 100. 
German speculative Thought, 3, 10, 22, 

25, 43 ; historical researches, 28, 59, 
Gerund-grinding, 84. 
Ghost, an authentic, 210. 
God, the unslumbering, omnipresent, 

eternal, 42 ; God's presence manifested 

to our eyes and hearts, 52 ; an absentee 

God, 130 
. Goethe's inspired melody, 202. 
Good, growth tod propagation of, 79. 
Great Men, 142. See Man. 
Gullibility, blessings of, 89. 
Gunpowder, use of, 31, 144. 

Habit, how, makes dullards of us all, 44. 

Half -men, 147. 

Happiness, the whim of, 152. 



Hero-worship, the corner-stone of all 
Society, 201. 

Heuschrecke and his biographic docu- 
ments, 8; 4^is loose, zigzag, thin- vis- 
aged character, 19 ; unaccustomed elo- 
quence, and interminable documentary 
superfluities, 58 ; bewildered darkness, 
237. 

History, all-inweaving tissue of, 15 ; by 
what strange chances do we live in, 38 ; 
& perpetual Revelation, 142, 156, 202. .< 

Homer's Iliad, 179. 

Hope, this world emphatically the place 
of, 129 ; false shadows of, 148. 

Horse, his own tailor, 43. 

Ideal, the, exists only in the Actual, 156, 

158. 
Imagination. See Fantasy. 
Immortality, a glimpse of, 208. 
Imposture, statistics of, 89. 
Independence, foolish parade of, 186, 199. 
Indifference, centre of, 136, 
Infant intuitions and acquirements, 71; 

genius and dulness, 75. 
Inspiration, perennial, 155, 167, 201. 
Invention, 31, 127. 
Invisible, the. Nature the visible Garment 

of, 43 ; invisible bonds, binding all Men 

together, 48 ; the Visible and Invisible, 

52 173. 
Irish, the, Poor-Slave, 228. 
Isolation, 86. 

Jesus of Nazareth, our divinest Symbol, 
178, 182, 

King, our true, chosen for us in Heaven, 

198, 
Kingdom, a man's, 96, 
Know thyself, and what thou canst work 

at, 132, 

Labour, sacredness of, 181. 

Land-owning, trade of, 102. 

Language, the Garment of Thought, 57 ; 

dead vocables, 84. 
Laughter, significance of, 25. 
Lieschen, 18. 
Life, Human, picture of, 15, 121, 136, 149; 

life-purpose, 107; speculative mystery^ 

of, 132, 191, 210; the most important 

transaction in, 135; nothingness of, 146, 

147. 
Light the beginning of all Creation, 157. 
Logic-mortar and wordy Air-castles, 42 ; 

undergromid workshop of Logic, 53, 

176. 
Louis XV., ungodly age of, 131. 
Love, what we emphatically name, 108; 



INDEX 



249 



pyrotechnic phenomena of, 108, 176; 
not altogether a delirium, 115 ; how pos- 
sible, in its highest form, 153, 171, 235. 
Ludicrous, feeling and instances of the, 
38, 144. 

Magna Charta, 215. 

Malthus's over-population panic, 180. 

Man, by nature naked, 2, 44, 49; essen- 
tially a tool-using animal, 32 ; the true 
Shekinah, 52; a divine Emblem, 57, 174, 
177, 190, 2l2 ; two men alone honour- 
able, 181. See ThinMng Man. 

Metaphors the stuflE of Language, 57. 

Metaphysics inexpressibly unproductive, 
42, 54. 

Milton, 131. 

Miracles, significance of, 203, 209. 

Monmouth-Street, and its "Ou' clo'" 
Angels of Doom, 193. 

Mother's, a, religious influence, 79. 

Motive-Millwrights, 176. 

Mountain scenery, 122. 

Mystery, all-pervading domain of, 54. 

Nakedness and hypocritical Clothing, 44, 
50; a naked Court-Ceremonial, 48; a 
naked Duke addressing a naked House 
of Lords, 49. 

Names, significance and influence of, 68, 
207. 

Napoleon and his Political Evangel, 142. 

Nature, the God-written Apocalypse of, 
41, 52 ; not an Aggegate but a Whole, 
55, 123, 196, 205 ; Nature alone antique, 
84 ; sympathy with, 121, 143 ; the ' Liv- 
ing Garment of God,' 150; Laws of 
Nature, 204. 

Necessity, brightened into Duty, 78. 

Newspaper Editors, 35; our Mendicant 
Friars, 201. 

Nothingness of life, 146. 

Obedience, the lesson of, 79, 198. 

Orpheus, 209. 

Over-population, 180. 

Own, conservation of a man's, 159. 

Paradise and Fig-leaves, 29 ; prospective 

Paradises, 108, 116. 
Passivity and Activity, 78, 129. 
Past, the, inextricably linked with the 

Present 136, ; for ever extant, 207. 
Paupers, what to do with, 183. 
Peace-Era, the much-predicted, 140. 
Peasant Saint, the, 182. 
Pelham, and the Whole Duty of Dandies, 

222. 
Perseverance, law of, 189. 
Person, mystery of a, 51, 107, 109, 190. 



Philosophies, Cause-and-Effect, 28. 
Phoenix Death-birth, 189, 194, 214. 
Property, 159. 
Proselytising, 6, 235. 

Radicalism, Speculative, 10, 22, 50, 199. 
Ealeigh's, Sir Walter, fine mantle, 38. 
Religion, dead letter and living spirit of, 

92 ; weaving new vestures, 171, 220. 
Reverence, early growth of, 79 ; indispen- 

sability of, 200. 
Richter, 25. 

Saints, living Communion of, 197, 202. 

Sarcasm, the panoply of, 104. 

Sa/rtor Resartus, genesis of, 8; its pur- 
pose, 213. 

Saturn or Chronos, 103. 

Savage, the aboriginal, 30. 

Scarecrow, significance of the, 49. 

Sceptical goose-cackle, 54. 

School education, insignificance of, 82, 84; 
tin-kettle terrors and incitements, 83 ; 
need of Soul- Architects, 85. 

Science, the Torch of, 1; the Scientific 
Head, 53. 

Secrecy, benignant efiScacies of, 174, 

Self -activity, 21. 

Self-annihilation, 149. 

Shame, divine, mysterious growth of, 31 ; 
the soil of all Virtue, 174. 

Silence, 143; the element in which all 
great things fashion themselves, 174. 

Simon's, Saint, aphorism of the golden 
age, 188 ; a false appUcation, 237. 

Smoke, advantage of consuming one's, 
120. 

Society founded upon Cloth, 40, 48, 50; 
how Society becomes possible, 171 ; so- 
cial Death and New-Birth, 172, 188, 
195, 214 ; as good as extinct, 184. 

Solitude. See Silence. 

Sorrow-pangs of Self -deliverance, 121, 127, 
128 ; divine depths of Sorrow, 151 ; Wor- 
ship of Sorrow, 154. 

Space and Time, the Dream-Canvas upon 
which Life is imaged, 42, 51, 204, 207. 

Spartan wisdom, 183. 

Speculative intuition, 40. See German. 

Speech, great, but not greatest, 174. 

Sphinx-riddle, the Universe a, 102. 

Stealing, 159, 182. 

Stupidity, blessings of, 130. 

Style, varieties of, 57. 

Suicide, 133. 

Sunset, 74, 123. 

Swallows, migrations and cooperative in- 
stincts of, 76. 

Swineherd, the, 74. 

Symbols, 173 ; wondrous agency of, 174 ; 



S50 



SARTOR RESARTUS 



extrinsic and intrinsic, 177; superan- 
nuated, 179, 185. 

Tailors, symbolic significance of, 230. 

Temptations in the wilderness, 146. 

Testimonies of Authors, 241. 

Teufelsdrockh's Philosophy of Clothes, 5; 
he proposes a toast, 11; his personal 
aspect, and silent deepseated Sanscu- 
lottism, 12; thawed into speech, 14; 
memorable watch-tower utterances, 15 ; 
alone with the Stars, 17; extremely 
miscellaneous environment, 18; plain- 
ness of speech, 22 ; universal learning, 
and multiplex literary style, 23: am- 
biguous-looking morality, 24; one in- 
stance of laughter, 25; almost total want 
of arrangement, 26 ; feeling of the lu- 
dicrous, 38 ; speculative Radicalism, 50; 
a singular Character, 61 ; Genesis pro- 
perly an Exodus, 64; unprecedented 
Name, 69; infantine experience, 70; 
Pedagogy, 80 ; an almost Hindoo Pas- 
sivity, 80 ; school-boy jostling, 83 ; he- 
terogeneous University-Life, 88 ; fever- 
paroxysms of Doubt, 92; first practical 
knowledge of the English, 93 ; getting 
under way, 95 ; ill success, 100 ; glimpse 
of high-life, 101 ; casts himself on the 
Universe, 107 ; reverent feeling towards 
Women, 108 ; frantically in love, 110 ; 
first interview with Blumine, 112 ; in- 
spired moments, 114; short of practical 
kitchen-stuff, 116; ideal bliss, and 
actual catastrophe, 118; sorrows, and 
peripatetic stoicism, 119; a parting 
glimpse of his Beloved on her way to 
England, 123; how he overran the 
whole earth, 124 ; Doubt darkened into 
Unbelief, 129 ; love of Truth, 131 ; a 
feeble unit, amidst a threatening In- 
finitude, 132; Baphometic Fire-baptism, 



135; placid indifference, 136 ; a Hyper- 
borean intruder, 144; Nothingness of 
life, 146; Temptations in the wilder- 
ness, 146 ; dawning of a better day, 
149; the Ideal in the Actual, 156 ; finds 
his true Calling, 158; his Biography 
a symbolic Adumbration, significant 
to those who can decipher it, 160; a 
wonder-lover, seeker and worker, 
166; in Monmouth-Street among the 
Hebrews, 192; concluding hints, 233; 
his public History not yet done, perhaps 
the better part only beginning, 237. 

Thinking Man, a, the worst enemy of 
the Prince of Darkness, 96, 158; true 
Thought can never die, 196. 

Time-Spirit, life-battle with the, 69, 103 ; 
Time, the universal wonder-hider, 209 ; 

Titles of Honour, 198. 

Tools, influence of, 32; the Pen, most 
miraculous of tools, 158. 

Unbelief, era of, 91, 119 ; Doubt darken- 
ing into, 128 ; escape from, 147. 
Universities, 88. 
Utilitarianism, 128, 186. 

View-huntingand diseased Self -conscious- 
ness, 124. 
Voltaire, 134 ; the Parisian Divinity, 200. 

War, 138. 

Wisdom, 52. 

Woman's influence, 108. 

Wonder the basis of Worship, 53 ; region 

of, 54. 
Words, slavery to, 42; Word-mongering 

and Motive-grinding, 130. 
Workshop of Life, 158. See Labour. 

Young Men and Maidens, 102, 104. 



Printed Ijy T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty, 
at the Edinburgh University Press. 



B^V"^^ 



